


Aureate

by Fettywap



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-05-28 18:31:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6340555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fettywap/pseuds/Fettywap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A nine-year old Rey moves in across the street from Luke, a recluse who moved away from his family after a tragedy. The two become very close, and Rey grows up under his care while unknowingly dragging him out of his depression. When she is a teenager, Leia sends her troubled son, Ben, to live with Luke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The New Neigbbor

**Author's Note:**

> I have never ever written anything before in my life aside from mediocre school related English papers, so I am really excited BUT SO NERVOUS about this!! I have tried to go over it as best as I can so I hope you can excuse mistakes that I've made :)  
> Please let me know what you think!

Luke Skywalker emerged from the front door of his one-story, worn-down beach house at seven in the morning every three days. He only did this regimented and necessary task to grocery shop and sometimes restock paper and typewriter tape. 

Roughly eight years into the routine and very little had changed in the scenery around the house. The sandy dunes dusted with beach plants and brambles were the same in their place in the landscape as they had been since he moved. He was at the end of a small island off the coast of North Carolina; the last house on the beach front gravel street, and not counting seasonal changes, the land hadn't deferred from its original layout. The house across the street from him, several yards away and to the left, was a more run down shack. It wasn't lifted like most houses around the coast, so a few decades worth of salty, humid air, a few tides and occasional hurricane flooding had eroded the brown, wooden paneling. 

No one had lived there for as long as Luke had taken up residence on the small isle, so he was jolted to see a little girl sitting on the porch across the gravel street. 

He hadn’t spent nearly enough time with children to accurately guess her age, but he pinned her to be in the seven to nine year age range. In the haze of grogginess brought on by the early morning, Luke took a moment to register the girl. His contact with people was very limited - he’d go weeks at a time not speaking a word unless he had to. He hadn’t so much as nodded his head in acknowledgement of a passing acquaintance in years. Luke’s new life was the sum of a countless amount of hours spent in solitude, wallowing in regret and memory. 

But Luke stopped his progress to the car. The stones that made up his driveway were crushed into a fine dust in the thin path he weaved every three days to the white truck. As Luke looked at the girl, wondering who she was, why she was there, he took an unprecedented step forwards. The unfamiliar scraping of stagnant rocks against each other was unfamiliar to him- in Luke’s semi-dormancy, his ears had become wary of sounds not etched into his routine, even if their source was only inches away. He was walking on mostly unchartered territory, literally and figuratively. 

Luke walked closer to the edge of his driveway, and he swallowed a wave of anxiety at the unsteady rocks beneath his feet. His eyes narrowed in the rising sun’s glare, and the squint made the girl come into focus. She was thin, a slip of a girl with a messy pony tail hanging over her shoulder. She was wearing a striped tank top and jean shorts that bared tanned skin and freckles he could see from across the road. Her limbs were willowy and awkward, folded in on herself. The fact that she was alone in the front of a house Luke had never known to be occupied mixed his anxiety of breaking routine and the worry growing in his gut. 

He paused at start of the dusty road separating the houses after he dumped his bag and keys on the hood of his car. “Hey, kid!”

The girl was propping her head up on tiny closed fists, her knobby elbows balancing on her even more knobby knees. Her head whipped up, and she stared at Luke curiously.

He looked both ways before he crossed - no one ever drove down it, so the gesture was a futile showing of safety. “What are you doing out here?”

The girl dropped one foot down to the step below where it was resting and let the arm leaning on it sling casually after. “I live here.”

“With who?” Luke couldn't fathom that a new family had moved in without him noticing, and though she didn’t seem like a homeless vagrant to him, Luke was wary of the story. 

She narrowed her big eyes at him, her cherub-like face was scrunched in suspicion. The girl didn’t answer him and her showing of matching wariness was endearing but frustrating. Maybe several years ago, before he became a veritable recluse and lost all that boyish charm and excitability, he’d have been more warm to the girl. As it was the girl and Luke’s first meeting, there was no cushion of familiarity and affection to make his words and tone kinder. Luke grumbled under his breath, putting his hands on his hips and tried again. “When did you move in here?” 

The girl worked her jaw in suspicion, glaring up at Luke with big eyes. “Who are you?” The question was accusatory, as if Luke was a dangerous stranger that had walked across the length of the island just to talk to her. He paused at the thought, but would have smiled if he was still capable - he had walked the length of his driveway for the first time in years just to speak with her. 

“I'm your neighbor. I didn’t realize anyone had moved in.” She didn't appear to be pleased by the answer, so Luke pulled his wallet out of his pocket. “Here’s my license,” he opened the leather and stretched his hand out to show her. “It has my address on it - see, right across the street from you.” 

The girl stood and leaned forwards, her nose comically close to the laminated card in his wallet. “We moved in on Friday.” The girl answered with crossed arms. Luke hadn't left his house all weekend, so the answer was somewhat clarifying as to why he didn't notice her before. 

Luke pocket his wallet as he asked, “Isn’t there school today?”

The girl laughed, not with but at him, and sat back down with her arms crossed. “It’s summer, Luke Skywalker.” He was startled by both of her statements - he knew it was getting hotter, but it always was on the beach. Luke was so disconnected, if he’d been forced to make a guess he’d have said it was March. As if that wasn’t startling enough, she had used his name. That particular combination of vowels and consonants had not met his ears in a long time, and he basked in the moment. Yes, that’s right. That’s what my name sounds like. I had forgotten.

He floundered for a few long moments. “Right. Summer,” his tongue felt too big for his mouth, and the need to be alone, even when he was only with a little girl, overwhelmed him. “Nice to meet you.” Luke wasn't sure if that was insensitive - she seemed like a matter of fact child and he walked away hoping she would accept his goodbye. 

Luke was halfway across the street, clenching his fists and counting long breaths until he was in his car - he was thinking of skipping the store today and going back inside - when the girl called out. 

“We haven’t met, yet. Not really.” When he turned, she was still sitting. He had to clear his throat, and looked desperately at his front door before turning back to her. Luke scratched the back of his head, “What do you mean?”

She cocked her head again. “I only know your name, you don’t know mine.” Luke should have smiled, raised the pitch of his voice to something less gruff and intimidating - more child appropriate - and asked her name. He should have asked to meet her parents, insisting he come back later with a welcoming gift, wishing them the best in their new home. 

Instead, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he tore his gaze from her. Luke walked away quickly, only feeling comfortable with the slight lowering of the ground under his feet when he merged with his well-worn path. 

He walked straight to the back of his house, through the living room that had sparse furniture and out the sliding glass door to his deck. Luke sat down in the sole chair, situated right in front of the dock leading to the ocean and stared, unseeing, at the horizon.


	2. Seashells and Early Mornings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy people are not hating this!!!!

Later that evening when he felt more stable, Luke’s stomach demanded that he go to the grocery store. 

Upon his exit outside, he saw that everything looked the same across the street except for a car in the driveway. It was old - a yellowing station wagon that was probably younger than his truck but not nearly as well taken care of. The girl was still on the porch, but with a book on her lap and the light on inside the home silhouetting her. 

He wasn't sure how late it was, only that the sun was halfway lowered into the sky already. Luke avoided looking at the girl again. He went to the store, walked down the same four aisles as he always did -meat, bread, fruit and vegetables, canned soup - and bought them from a cashier he rarely saw. 

Luke’s car pulling into the driveway illuminated the neighbors as he passed their house. The girl was still there, and this time he did notice the time - just after ten at night. 

He approached her again, and she greeted him. “Hello Luke Skywalker.” Even for a child, it seemed more chipper than he deserved after the way he’d walked away from her earlier. 

“Uh, hey… Kid.” He still didn't know her name and was not comfortable enough to ask it. “Why are you still here? Where are your parents?” Luke was so anxious about not only being in the presence of her but the lack of other adults. In fact, as he stared at her for longer than it would ever be socially acceptable for a grown man to stare at a child, he felt a white streak of anger burn its way up his body. He hadn’t been angry in so long - at least not at something other than himself - that it was disturbingly pleasant to let the emotion wash over him. The girl was really cute. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a cuter kid - her hair was soft and wavy, fluffy like a toddler’s and her baby hairs haloed her face in willow-y tufts. She had a round face and cheeks he knew some old ladies would love to pinch, and big eyes that seemed to reflect everything he was feeling back at him. How could such an adorable little girl have parents who moved her into such a shitty house and then let her play outside by herself, seemingly all day?

She shrugged, and the light flooding her from the house shifted across her skin. There were small dips and bumps along her neck and shoulders that shouldn't have been there - shadows of bones pressing up against skin without the cushion of healthy fat. The stark contrast of the clear signs of neglect etched on her body and the rest of her angled features bristled at his consciousness. “Are they inside?” 

“No. But Unkar is.” 

Luke chose not to ask, as the myriad of questions fogging his brain made it impossible to pick just one. ‘No’, her parents aren’t here? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Unkar, is that an imaginary friend - worse? Geeze… Instead of addressing any of the important things he wanted to ask, Luke walked past her up the steps of the front deck and knocked on the side of the screen door. He was irritated and usually wouldn't ever just walk into someone's home, but Luke didn't wait for a response. He opened the door and pushed down his wariness at the site of the home. It was equally as run down on the inside as out - chipped paint, darkened corners and peeling wallpaper. From what he could see there was no furniture, only several boxes piled onto one side of the hallway and an old tv propped on a plastic crate in the middle of the living room. He walked further in to see that a couch was against the wall facing it. “Hello?”

His call was met with a gruff, muffled response. Somewhere down another short hallway he felt heavy footsteps and Luke turned, preparing himself to greet whoever it was. 

The man was large, his frame pressing almost against both walls of the hallway and his head nearly brushing the ceiling. “Who are you?” His voice was deep, gravely and unpleasant. Luke didn't see any remote familial resemblance in the swells of flesh making up the man’s cheeks and chin. 

“I'm Luke. I live across the street. Your daughter is outside.” He didn't expect friendly chatter, so he got to the point. 

The man tilted his head to loom around Luke and shouted, “girl! Get in here!” Luke was too outraged that the vile man would address the sweet little girl outside by a dismissive pronoun instead of the name Luke was sure was perfectly fine. 

She did, staggering up the steps and letting the door slam behind her. She skirted between Luke and the wall. “Yeah?”

“You bothering this man?” She glanced at Luke, and he winced at the complete difference in appearance now that she was in front of this man. She wasn't confident, proud. She wasn't hiding a smirk behind her lips and sizing up whoever this man was. She was wilting beneath his gaze and Luke suddenly felt guilty for facilitating the forced conversation.

“No, no, that's not what I meant. She's a.. She's a sweet kid,” he scratched the back of his head and took a deep breath. “I just.. It's getting late, is all. I wanted to make sure you knew she was outside. Alone.”

He could tell the idea of monitoring her whereabouts or telling her to go to bed had not crossed his mind, and would never. The behemoth of a man made a grunting noise that reverberated his whole body. “Get to bed.”

The girl scurried off without a backward glance and disappeared down the hallway the man had just come from. To Luke’s surprise a smile grew on his face, splitting his lips in an unnatural curl. “The lady who sold me this house said you minded your own business. She said it’d be like having no neighbors at all because you never came outside. Never talked to anyone.”

His gut instincts to be wary spiked and he had to grit his teeth to not take a step back from him. “She's right. I usually do. Your daughter has been on the front porch all day, though, I was starting to worry she had no parents at all.”

He grunted a small chuckle. “She doesn't. I'm stuck looking after the little brat.”

Luke felt a wave of uneasiness wash over him, warning his gut with anxiety and accelerating his heart rate. “You don't peg me as a babysitter.”

The man took a step forward, and Luke took one back. The act was small but he felt ashamed nonetheless. A few years ago, when he was braver and wiser and a million other things he'd lost to himself, he'd have stood his ground. “You don't peg me as a pervert but maybe you are! Why else would you be so interested?” Before Unkar said those words, he might have been strong enough to demand a real answer and get to the bottom of who the girl was and why she was with Unkar. Luke was mustering up the courage to do just that when Unkar spat those ugly words at him. 

The accusation stung and enraged him in equal measures. Instead of sticking up for himself, for the girl he'd gotten in trouble, Luke did another thing that ashamed him. 

He retreated, mumbling an apology and a goodnight and leaving. He didn't even let the screen door slam close like the girl had. Luke walked back across the street, his feet finding their usual path across the crushed rocks and back inside. He ate tomato soup and toast, and stared at a half-written page in his typewriter until his eyes burned, and went to bed. 

 

It wasn't until four days later that he saw the girl again. She was in his backyard, sort of, because when he walked down his private dock to the beach, she was standing where the tide brushed against the shore with her feet sunk into the wet sand. 

Luke took walks up and down the shoreline every morning, just before sunrise, and had only come across other people a handful of times. To see the girl there was another unwelcome shock to his system. 

He approached her, slowly, and chastised himself for it. Luke still hoped that he hadn't gotten her in trouble with whoever that man was and at the same time didn't care. He was glad to see her again, but also wished she'd stay permanently out of his site. The strangle paradoxical emotions warred with his curiosity. 

“Good morning,” he found himself mumbling. His feet hadn't made noise in the sand in his approach, but she didn't seem too surprised to hear his voice anyway.

“Hi,” she murmured, looking at him out of the one eye she could see him from with her head turned.

Luke remained a few feet behind her, watching the sun rise out of the vast ocean before them. 

“How've you been, kid?” 

She shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”

The awkwardness was palpable - he could feel it consume him like he was watching from a distance, and he felt even more ashamed of this because she was just a child. He was so used to solitude that even speaking to a nine year old was difficult. 

The girl saved him from his brief self pitying stupor by standing up and turning to face him, brushing off the sand from her bare legs and extending a sea shell she had been fiddling with out to him. 

He stared at her, confused, and made no move to reach for it. It was a tiny conch shell, white and looked almost chalky from what he could see. Her thin arm was stretched out in front of her, and the shell laid in the palm of her hand like an offering. 

He stuttered, beginning to ask what she was doing, “wh-what-”

“It's your shell. This is your beach...” She took a few steps closer, arm still forwards, “I'm giving it to you before you make me leave.”

He reached for the small shell and held it delicately in his hand. Her tiny fingers closed in a fist back down at her side. A smile bloomed on his face and it felt very foreign to him. “I wasn’t going to make you leave.” Luke regarded the pretty shell in his hand again, and stepped forward to give it back to her. “And, anyway, I technically don’t own any of the land past these steps.”

The girl smirked at him and he watched her take the shell and put it in her pocket. “I’ve never seen a shell before. At least in real life. I've never even seen the ocean.” She was trying to hide a smile, not let him see how impressed she is with her new finding. Luke wasn’t quite sure how to respond, so he opted to tell her the name of the tiny shell, instead. “That’s a good find. It’s called a Banded Tulip.”

She’d looked at him, amazed, her small smile breaking out into a grin. She clumsily brushed wayward strands of hair out of her eyes and licked her lips before asking, “do you know the names of all shells?” Luke tried not to wallow in the attention, in the trust that he had all the knowledge in the world of marine life that she could ever want to know. “Sort of, kid.”

For the rest of the morning, until the girl scrambled up from her hands and knees in the wet sand and sprinted back home, they combed the beach together for seashells. Luke had mostly followed her lead, watching her spot a shell on the ground and inspecting it for holes. 

He looked over her skinny shoulders and murmured the names of them - “that’s a ponderous ark, very common.” She’d worked over that word for several seconds, mouthing the name and whispering it to herself in a type of amazement one loses after childhood. 

“Is this from a clam?” and he’d correct, “no, oyster. Eastern oyster.” She’d crouch down a few feet away, “this is the same thing, right?” Luke shook his head, patiently, “That’s a mussel.” He liked the way she rubbed her fingers down the bodies of the shells, inspecting them and comparing their differences. It impressed him, and he endeavored to supply her with more information. 

Every few feet, he would answer more questions, “no, no they look similar but this smaller one is called a calico scallop, and the bigger one is a cockle shell.” 

“Those are quahog shells. Kinda ugly, huh?” The girl agreed, and reached for the next new find. Eventually she’d seen something in the distance and screeched in excitement, running for it and picking it up just to sprint back to where he lagged behind her. “What is this?” Her wonder and excitement was contagious. She held a sand dollar pinched between two fingers out to him. It was broken, only about two thirds of it was intact, but Luke handled it with care equal to the veneration she’d bestowed on it. “That’s a sand dollar. If you keep looking, you’ll find a whole one, I bet.”

The girl cupped it in her hands and walked to the pile of shells closer to his house that they’d made - all things she wanted to keep. He followed after, watching as she dropped to her knees to organize her treasures. “I can’t keep all of these, Luke.”

“Maybe just a few - your favorites.” The girl fingered the shells and pulled three from the collection, thrusting them out to him. “These - but can they stay at your house?”

He wanted to agree but hesitated, stuttering out his, “why?”

The girl didn’t give him much of an answer, and stood up quickly as she dusted off the sand on her knees and legs. “Just because. Maybe I can’t keep them safe. Do ya’ hear that?” Her head whipped up like prey in tall grass as a lion lurked nearby, and Luke failed to catch on to what she was clearly attuned to. 

She was already rushing away from him towards his boardwalk, waving an arm towards him in goodbye. It wasn’t until she was already out of his site, walking down the stairs at the other side of the wooden structure that led to the street that he heard the rumble of an engine. The man she lived with was arriving home, and Luke pondered the fact that she’d been at the beach at nearly five in the morning, alone, and his neighbor hadn’t even known she’d been with him.


	3. Milkshakes and School Supplies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoy this next chapter!!! I've rewritten it several times and I'm still not sure about it, but I didn't want to overthink it too much and ruin the integrity of what I'm trying to get across with this chapter. That being said, there are probably grammar mistakes galore and I hope they don't take away from the content... Anyway, PLEASE let me know what you think!!!!

Four days after that, the hottest day of the year already at 11 in the morning, he was in his car and pulling out of the driveway when he saw her laying down on her porch. The girl was on her stomach, her feet dangling up in the air and clacking together at the ankles as she flipped through a newspaper. “Hey!” He called out the window, pulling up in front of her house. 

She swiveled her body completely, swinging upright and flinging her legs out in front of her to stand up. “Hey Luke!”

“It’s too hot to be outside, kid. Where’s Unkar?” The familiar anger crept up on him as unexpectedly and fiercely as the last time. What the hell was that man thinking, letting her hang around outside? Is he even here?

The girl grinned up at him with her white teeth and he noticed for the first time that there were gaps, some completely empty and some with growing adult-teeth. “I'm from Arizona,” the girl answered with a smirk, “this isn't that hot.” 

“Even so, you should be inside. Where is he?” Luke’s hand not on the steering wheel hung out of the window, and the metal of the car burned against his skin as he let his palm graze it. 

The girl sat back down on the wooden steps. “He went to work, I guess. I woke up and he was gone.” 

Luke glanced at his watch - from what he knew of his neighbor so far, he'd have been at work already for a few hours and would likely not return until nightfall. “And you thought you'd sit out here?”

She shrugged, skimming her bare toes against the wood. “I guess. There's nothing to do inside.” 

He already ran out of bread and soup and he had a deadline coming up, which meant he needed paper. The girl can’t stay outside all day, and she can’t stay inside Unkar’s house either, Luke thought, especially when I doubt there's air conditioning in there. 

Luke’s worry intensified in his gut - he barely knew anything about this child or the man who was supposed to be taking care of her, but what he did know was unsettling. He felt intensely guilty for not being concerned enough to step in before that day, and wondered if she’d been given enough to eat, had water, something to occupy her time with that was safe since she’d moved there. 

“I’m going to go into town, do you, uh, wanna join me?”

She was more than agreeable to come along, a trait that made Luke even more worried - a little girl eagerly agreeing to see something new with someone she didn’t know was not a good combination. She jumped up, pounded her feet up the front porch and threw open the screen door. Luke hadn’t been inside Unkar’s house since that first night, but he couldn't see past the darkness of the front room to tell if the boxes were still there. The tiny brunette disappeared, running back into the house and coming out like a rocket seconds later in a pair of old sneakers. 

 

The drive there would have stressed Luke out - he didn't have a back seat and the girl was definitely small enough to need a booster seat - but she was so sweet, funny, exuberant that he couldn't bring himself to be. He’d finally asked for her name, and she’d laughed, a joyous and innocent sound, supplying a chipper, “I’m Rey.” 

Her name was so appropriate, so symbolic and true to what he knew of her, it was almost like a punch to his gut to hear it out loud. Yes. Of course it’s Rey. How could it not be? Luke rolled the word around his mouth, curling his tongue against the single consonant and two vowels that made up the perfect, monosyllabic name for his neighbor. He felt foolish, embarrassed, for being overwhelmed by the profoundness of the moment. It was just a name, and it hardly filled in any of the blank spaces of her life for him, but Luke couldn’t help but feel like he’d been given a precious gift. Rey. It was perfect. 

On the car ride to town, he learned that Rey was nine, that she was two grades ahead of where she should be - she would be ten years old at the end of 6th grade that year- and that her favorite color was green. He learned that she loved math, and she loved building things. When Luke asked for clarification, Rey twisted in the seat he’d double-buckled her into and cheesily greened up at him. “I helped another kid at the last home I was at rebuild a car! And, I’m pretty good at taking things apart, like, you know - old phones and radios and junk. I can make them work again.”

He learned a bunch of other things, too - what she wants to be when she grows up (an astronaut, a pilot, an engineer, though she figures she’ll have to do each one at a time), how she was excited to live so near the ocean but was scared because she didn’t know how to swim, how that was so weird because she’d always dreamed of oceans since she was little. 

He didn’t have time to even try and comfort her fears or praise her intelligence - Rey spoke fast and furious, and the drive down the island was short. 

Before long, they were coming to the long bridge that linked the strip of land to the state of North Carolina, and he had to threaten to roll up the window to keep Rey from sticking her torso out. She was fascinated by the bridge itself, and even more entransed as they drove up, up, up, and peaked at the top. A vast stretch of water and land reached out on either side farther than both of them could see, and Rey stared with an open mouth. 

“Do you have a boat Luke? Have you ever been on a boat?” She didn’t leave room to answer either question before Rey continued, “I want to go on one of those boats so bad, Luke. I love the ocean! Look at how big it is - oh my god, do you see that big one? What is that called?” 

He muttered, “yacht,” but Rey had moved on to something else, and soon they were over the bridge and state-side. 

“Wow,” she sat back down in her chair, thoroughly amazed by the site she’d just taken in. “I didn't know there was this much water in the whole world!”

Luke flicked his turn signal on and stated, very matter of factly, “you know, Rey, the surface of the world is made up of 70% water.” He could tell she didn't quite believe him as she whirled an eyebrow, something he was impressed with because at nine he could barely wink one eye at a time. 

They pulled into the parking lot of the small grocery store, and before he could walk around to her side of the car and unbuckle the makeshift safety harness, Rey was throwing open the creaking door and leaping down from the truck, landing with a thud on the ground. 

“Wow! This is way different from the other stores I’ve been in. Like, way different.” 

She pressed her nose against the glass of the front door, splayed fingers leaving smears on the surface. 

There were a few people watching, and Luke smiled at the attention she garnished. The store was more crowded than usual, telling of the changing season and the summer vacationers arriving. She stayed by his side throughout the shopping excursion, and Luke observed a change in her not dissimilar to what he witnessed when he first spoke to Unkar. Rey spoke more quietly and gently, she didn't simmer with exuberance and curiosity - he'd have chalked it up to being taught to behave in grocery stores but Luke doubted she’d even been in a grocery store like she was now. He wondered if Rey was simply more comfortable around him or if she was courteous in a way most children didn't learn until maturity - after all, she wasn't a loud or obnoxious little girl in the first place. 

He found himself indulging on things he usually didn’t buy - potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, juice and soda, and sweet fruits he hadn’t eaten in years. He gauged her reactions, passing by things she wrinkled her nose at and not being able to help himself when she looked at something longingly. 

After they were back in the car, it took a lot of maneuvering to fit her and all the groceries in the cabin. He usually piled his paper bags onto the passenger seat, but they sat on either side of and below her, in between her feet. Luke smiled as Rey glanced back and forth between the bags, licking her lips and squirming. The girl was hungry, and he wished she’d told him earlier. Of course she hadn’t eaten - that horrible man probably only had beer in their little home. 

“Let’s make a pit stop - I’m starving.” She smiled at him, patting her tummy and bouncing a little in her seat. “Me too!”

So, he bought her a huge lunch which she marveled at - a cheeseburger and fries with a Cheerwine and a giant milkshake he makes her share. Rey giggled throughout the meal, laughing at the faces he made and the stories he told. Luke found himself wishing he’d known her sooner, known her when she was little so he could have watched her grow into the funny, vivacious and kind girl she was at nine. He wondered if she was raised by people who fostered her easygoing, fierce spirit or if Rey was rising above her harsh upbringing and blossoming into that on her own, in spite of the adults in her life. He wondered if this was just her nature - a rare and precious creature, and he wondered if the path her life was taking would endeavor to harden her, make her lose this captivating, entrancing part of herself. No, he thinks as Luke watches her futile attempt to swipe whipped cream off her upper lip with her little pink tongue, I won’t let it. 

On the car ride back, Rey fought sleep so hard that it made Luke chuckle. He wanted to let her, but as he pulled up to her house he saw that Unkar still wasn't home.

“Rey,” he nudged her awake, “you can watch tv in my house until Unkar gets home. Sound good?”

She gave him another big smile with practically all of her teeth showing and agreed and laughed again as she almost ran into his house, stopped herself with a jerk and jogged back over to the car to help him with the groceries. 

Later on, well past dinner time and into their fifth game of chess, Rey heard her guardian’s car again before he did, and he insisted that he walk her back home. He wanted to talk to Unkar again, urge him that Rey needed more care than he was providing. 

He did just that, approaching the bulky man with hands covered in grease and smudges of oil on his face and clothes, and kept Rey at his side. “Hi again, Unkar.”

He grumbled, glaring down at Rey and stomping towards the pair. “You have me at a disadvantage.” He was surprised at the colloquial saying, but Luke smacked his lips on his answer, “Luke.”

“You know, Unkar, if Rey hadn’t spent the day with me she wouldn’t have eaten and probably would have stayed outside on your porch.”

“Oh yeah,” Unkar said it like a question and stepped forwards, motioning for the little girl to come to him, but she didn’t, “well good thing you’re around.” His dismissiveness did nothing to ease his anger. “I work for a living. I don’t have time to play with little girl’s all day.” Unkar turned his head to the side and barked at Rey, “get inside. The kitchen boxes better be unpacked by the time I go to bed.” He turned to go inside, and Luke placed a hand on her shoulder. 

Luke worked his jaw over the second vague implication Unkar had thrown his way and kneeled before Rey, taking her little hands in one of his. “Are you… You feel safe with Unkar, Rey?” The fact that he had made a jabbing joke over pedophilia to Luke made him shudder and he wondered if Unkar honestly suspected him of it and why, if he did, he would let Rey anywhere near him. 

She shrugged her shoulders, and he could see on the tanned skin of her arms there was a sunburn blooming. Her easy smile slipped through even when addressing his hard question. “Yeah.”

He ran his hands up and down her arms, squeezing lightly. “How do you know him? What -I’m sorry, but what about your parents? How does he know them?” Rey winced at his question, but her good nature forbid her from getting upset at him. Luke felt his heart pounding in his rib cage. He’d been dying to know more about her, but making Rey talk about something that had to have been painful for her killed him a little inside. “I’m not sure, exactly. When I was a baby they left me at the hospital. I don’t remember where I was before, but I lived in a group home with a bunch of other kids until Gina, my social worker - she found Unkar because he’s related to my mom.”

Luke wasn’t sure what to say to her with a painful hammering of his pulse running throughout his body, but Rey continued with a wistful smile on her face. “Gina said if I stayed with him, my parents would be able to find me when they came back for me.” There were so many things he wanted to say to her dueling inside his head. Luke knew, without a doubt, her parents would not be making a re-entrance into her life (at least a pleasant one) and he’d be doing her a favor in the long run by making her believe that now. On the other hand, the hopefulness that radiated from her was like a beacon. A lighthouse on calm shores that flooded him with it’s strength. 

He let her go, watched her walk inside after Unkar, promising she’d shower and go right to bed and that if Unkar gave her trouble over the boxes to come and get him. Luke went to sleep that night with an unfamiliar but welcome warmth in his heart. 

 

Rey’s first summer on that small, lightly populated barrier island was an awakening for her and Luke. She spent nearly every day with him, leading their walks along the beach, chirping away facts she learned in his large collection of books, holding his hand as they walked through town. 

Luke doted over her with a joyous meticulation. The closest he'd ever come to that kind of relationship, a pure and innocent loving one, was the family Luke had destroyed. He hated to think about his nephews - it's nephew now, you fool, he spat at himself, so Luke swallowed the familiar grief and self loathing.

Rey’s well being was the first thing he thought about in the morning, and the last thing he thought about at night. It has been eight years and the shadow of his deepest regret was always lurking. He used to feel the memory in the corners of his mind, hiding behind each thought and breath he took. Now, Rey and her light washed through him like the purest holy water. She was his Saving Grace in every way and Luke endeavored to be worthy of the duty he felt the universe had given him; take care of Rey, protect Rey, love Rey.

Around the second month it became clear to him that Unkar encouraged Rey to spend time with him just so he wouldn't have to bother with her, and he was more than willing to do so. 

She had her own room in his house - a light blue square lined with white wicker furniture that he'd refurbished just for her. Luke had even bought new drapes and bedding, and a brand new rug all in the same shade of pale yellow. 

Luke was a writer - a science fiction author who'd done well for himself under a pseudonym. The fact that he had a fat nest egg more than capable of supporting him and Rey was another sign that she belonged with him. If he was just a kind neighbor with a normal job and a normal salary, he was sure that he wouldn't take on so much responsibility for Rey, but he was able to and he felt like he needed to. Luke was sure that Rey being in his life and protected by him was etched in the stars, in the skin of both their hearts, like heavy ink stains on their souls. He couldn't stop himself from doingi all he could for Rey even if he wanted to, if he tried. 

He'd shown it to her after their fifth night of her taking up his bed and him on the couch because Unkar was away on a business trip she'd sobbed to Luke about having to go on. 

She'd arrived at his house after being sent home to eat dinner with Unkar, who'd come home early from work, sobbing. He'd never seen Rey cry before, even after a scary incident with a sting ray and another one with a beached jellyfish, and he'd felt his heart stop. Luke dropped to his knees in front of the small girl and cupped her elbows in his warm hands. Rey’s face was blotchy, pale with red splotches, and her eyes lined with dewy tears and skin rubbed red with her fists.

“What's wrong, Rey? What happened?” He asked her as sweetly as he could with his eyes casting behind her to her house across the street. 

She'd hiccuped and swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “Unkar has to - has to go out of t-town. And he says I have to come with - with him.” Luke gave her a big glass of water and a paper napkin with a handful of animal crackers and told her to sit while he spoke with Unkar. 

As it turned out, the man grudgingly said he had a business deal in Winston - several hours away - and Luke was surprised that he had even thought to bring Rey. Unkar was more than agreeable, even muttered a thank you, and Luke sent Rey back home with dry eyes and a promise for a fun few days. 

Unkar took full advantage of not having to cart Rey with him, and was gone for two weeks. Luke bought the bedding and drafted her to help paint, and he'd tucked her in bed that night feeling like he could cry of happiness. 

After the trip, Rey slept there on the weekends sometimes, and the grumbling man never said no. He was hardly available to ask in the first place. 

By the end of the summer, Luke started noticing things he should have months earlier; she seemed to only have a few items of clothing, which were only washed at Luke’s house. She didn't have a single toy, and hardly any personal items at all. He confronted Unkar about it one day in his driveway while Rey was cleaning her room in her house. “You think those checks they send me every month are enough for brand new shit? I gotta pay rent you know,” he’d practically spat on the ground in front of Luke. The argument had nearly escalated into Luke throwing a punch but Rey had bounded down from the small house and grinned up at both of them. “Unkar, I’m going to go play with Luke since I’m done with my chores.” She slipped her little hand into his and tugged him towards his house, and as far as Luke was concerned the argument was over. 

I can buy her everything she needs - I can afford it. Over my dead body will that joke of a foster father be responsible for giving Rey what she wants. 

There were hundreds of heavy questions he wanted to ask Rey about her past, her experiences in foster care and if there were any that still troubled her. He wondered if she had nightmares or if she knew deep down that her parents were never coming back. 

Luke wanted to bring them up to her on hundreds of occasions, when an emotional tidal wave washed over him, made him ache for the pain and unfairness of this tiny person's life. The right moment never seemed to come up, though. How could it, when everything they did together was so fun and light and good? Was he supposed to ask her about living in a group home while they ate ice cream on the pier, pointing out jumping fish and big boats? Could he ruin one of their swimming lessons by bringing up the parents who abandoned her in between backstrokes? 

Luke would look at her; the one part of his life he now enjoyed, the only thing that had made him truly smile in years, and know that hurting her in any way was not an option. One day, though, he couldn't stop a question from blurting out. He asked, as Rey hung on his back waist deep in the ocean with laughter bubbling out of her throat with each wave, if Unkar had bought her any school supplies. 

“School supplies?” She'd asked, wiping water out of her face and adjusting her grip on his neck to float on her belly with her legs out behind her. 

“Backpack, folders, paper… You know, Rey. School supplies.” 

She'd been silent, and of course that told him that Unkar hadn't even thought about it, wouldn't care even if he had. And Rey hadn't either. She was a child; that kind of thing was up to a parent, and he was the only thing in her life resembling that. 

And of course, Luke had taken her out that day to do it. Her social worker had enrolled her in a school before she officially moved with Unkar and Rey had already shown Luke the letter that told her what day registration was, what supplies she should buy and what she could and could not wear to school. 

The shopping trip was a symphony of exclamations from Rey. “Luke! Look at this notebook, it has Neptune on it! That's my favorite planet!” They'd ended up buying either a notebook or folder for every planet, in fact. “Wow, these pencils have cats on them,” she'd murmur, and in the cart they'd go. “Hey, what's the difference between these two highlighters?” She'd ask, and Luke would just buy both packs. 

When they got to the lunch box aisle, Luke nearly bought her three different ones because she couldn't decide, but she'd looked so guilty over it that they decided on the bright yellow one with strawberries all over it. 

When it came time for registration day, Rey had to ask Luke to drive her to the salvage yard and get Unkar to call the school and tell them Luke had permission to go with her instead. Rey was tall for her age, but being two full grades ahead was still obvious. She looked like a little kid, with big eyes and a baby face that was still what would be considered “cute.” Her limbs were long and wiry but she still had a soft layer of baby fat. She moved to hold his hand a few times walking through the hallways to meet her teachers and find her locker but so many of the kids weren't even there with a parent that she was too embarrassed.

They left registration day with Rey buzzing in excitement and Luke worried over how she'd do as a nine year old in middle school. She was smart, even two grades ahead she was in honors math and science, but his little Rey was still so innocent. He worried over other kids taking advantage of her or making her feel like an oddity. 

“Luke, can I stay the night here, please?” He would always say yes to that question, but she continued before he could with, “it's just, Unkar sometimes keeps the TV on all night and I want to get a good night's sleep tonight.” 

That night, he reflected on how much his life had changed that summer. Before Rey, he'd been lonely without knowing it and constantly regretting his past. Now, he had someone that needed him, that made him laugh and laughed with him, that he needed back. He thought about how nervous he was for her first day, and how he was probably more scared than she was. 

He wanted to pull her into a hug, to cup the back of her little head and comfort her like she hadn’t been throughout her life. After that summer, Luke suspected that Unkar had been the one to discover he had a relative in foster care, and did something on the wrong side of illegal to bribe his way into being her guardian. The precious, sweet, intelligent little girl sleeping across the hall from him was nothing more than a paycheck for Unkar. But, suddenly, Luke found himself realizing that he didn’t care. 

Though it was heartbreaking that the people supposed to care and love Rey had abandoned her, exploited and neglected her, Luke was doubting that she had a better option than staying where she was - at least here, he knew there was someone to keep an eye on her. Someone who knew her worth as a person, who knew how smart and special she was. Someone who cared that she went to bed with a full stomach and clean pajamas, that she owned new and pretty clothes, that her hair was brushed and her permission slips signed. 

Luke would gladly take over all of those duties, even if Unkar’s name was on her record as her guardian. If it gave Rey peace of mind that she stay where she could hope her parents would find her, then Luke would honor it. The whole though process took a very short time to go through but Luke found himself enveloping the idea completely. 

Even when Rey pined for the return of her parents and Luke would never take the place of the dad she'd never really met, he would endeavor to fill that void for as long as she let him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for your kind comments, you have no idea how encouraging it is to read them. I'm so serious when I say that the last real thing I wrote was a paper on intersectionalities of oppression in marginalized communities, and my professor gave me a B on it! Again, I'd love to hear what you all think :) You've no clue how badly I want to sign off with an actual Fetty Wap quote, but I keep imagining the real Fetty Wap sueing me over it or something, and then everyone I know would discover I write Star Wars fanfiction in my spare time and I think I would actually die from embarrassment.


	4. Sports and Phone Calls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a lot longer than the previous ones, and it is also not at all whah the original layout calls for. I went rogue!   
> Not that anyone would be able to tell the difference, but that means I am extra nervous because of the rewrite. Ben was not supposed to make an appearance until later on, but this IS a reylo story and I'd hate to dissapoint anyone by keeping him away for much longer.   
> I hope you guys enjoy it!

Years went by like that. Rey and Luke in a pseudo father and daughter relationship and Unkar collecting checks from the government for care he barely provided.

By the time she was fourteen, Rey lived with Luke almost one hundred percent of the time and only saw Unkar when he made her come home to clean and for social worker check - ups. He had even moved to an apartment complex across the bridge - Luke remembered the day he'd practically dragged Rey by her hair out of his house to meet the social worker at the apartment to be checked. He generally tried to stay out of Unkar’s way unless it upset Rey, and she was so easy-going that hardly ever happened. 

The years had passed with ease for the two of them and their simple, pleasant symbiosis. Rey’s school mates were welcoming of her and kind. The only major blimp on the radar had been when Rey announced after her very first day at nine that she was “never using a lunch box again! No one was using one! Everyone brings paper bags!” Some kids had made fun of her for it, but as far as Luke knew after that it had been smooth sailing. 

They never fought, though he suspected it would start soon as her fourteenth year was showing signs of moodiness. Luke was even looking forward to her teenage years and shooing boys off her with a broom - any semblance of normalcy in her life with him was a good thing as far as he was concerned. 

No one had questioned his presence in her life, and most of her friends and teachers knew him as her uncle. Luke had signed her up for as many activities with kids her age as he felt she could handle - he had worried and stressed over her being able to make friends considering her two year age difference with her classmates, and it had taken a year of trial and error to find after school activities she liked. 

At nine, he'd forced her into ballet lessons, which Rey had flourished at. She was good at everything she did, unsurprising to Luke, but three years later when her dance teachers had suggested to them that she was talented enough for private lessons and summer camps, Rey declined. 

She'd stood there in her pink tights under a black leotard, hair twisted into a bun Luke had to redo three times, staring up at him with big eyes. “Luke,” Rey whispered in the hallway she'd pulled him into after practice, “Ms. Lauren wants to talk to you about private lessons, she says I'm too advanced for this class now!” Rey was twelve and had sailed through the levels offered at the small dance studio during her three years there. 

Luke had smiled, laughed in elation at how proud he was, but Rey stopped his hug gently and interrupted him. “No, no… I don't want to.” Upon further questioning, Rey had explained, “I don't have time for it. I like ballet but… I don't know. I'd rather worry about school than the Nutcracker.” She'd giggled, rising to be en pointe and doing a tiny plié in jest at her comment. How could he argue? She was the perfect child - too dedicated to her already advanced schoolwork to put more work into her talent at dancing. 

At ten, she'd started on a club soccer team but at thirteen Luke had nearly punched one of the coaches of the opposing team in the semi final game of the season. Rey was the fastest kid on her team and the coach had urged his team to block her as much as possible - “keep the ball away from number 7!” Luke had heard him shout. As Rey was going to head-butt the ball, another player nearly knocked her over in an effort to bicycle kick it in the opposite direction. With Rey’s trajectory and the other players In collision, Rey had ended up with a profusely bleeding head wound that needed stitches. 

She'd looked up at him instantly after it happened from her hands and knees. Rey knew exactly where in the crowd of parents he was and he could tell just from the half a second of eye contact that Rey wanted to cry, but wouldn't. He’d jogged into the field the same time as all the coaches and the referee when Luke had gotten into the fight with the other coach - he was just feeling his arm tense in preparation for shoving the man when Rey, with a watery voice, tugged on his sleeve and murmured, “Luke, I’m okay.”

It had been his first of many important lessons in being a “parent” - the child always came first, even when he was so angry he could see red. The next lesson had been at a math and science summer camp Rey was sent to for two summers in a row by her school. At the annual math competition, Rey’s opponent in the finals had answered incorrectly. The other child had blurted out the correct answer before Rey could have been given the chance to answer herself, and the judges had brushed it off, calling it a tie. Luke had seathed in the front row of the pauditorium. When he saw Rey directly after, she was exuberant - happy for her opponent, for herself, for just having been able to take part in it at all. He wouldn't ruin it for her no matter how angry he was. Luke was once again struck by the impact Rey had on his life - she was making him a better, stronger person simply by being there. He was sure he'd never stop being unworthy of the gift the universe had given him; redemption in the form of a skinny, bright, and joyful Rey. 

Eventually they'd settled on running. Her middle school welcomed her on the track and field and cross country teams, and she did well on the high school ones as well. Luke had tried to join her on her morning jogs on the beach but never could keep up with or last as long as Rey. Before she started sleeping at his house every night, Rey had just started her freshman year of high school at twelve and joined the team. He had been nervous to allow her to jog the beach by herself but they began a routine of Luke sitting on his back porch and watching her . 

It was on one of her runs that Luke got a phone call from his sister. Rey had never met her, and Luke had only told her about his family on a few occasions. 

Rey didn’t know much about Luke’s past, but she did know it was a point of contention for him. The lead ball of dread that grew in his gut at Leia’s name on his phone screen was the reason why - Rey’s life was hard enough without having to worry about Luke’s family. “Hey Leia,” he answered after awkwardly clearing his throat. It felt too casual a greeting, like swiping a hand into a cold, dark chasm hoping to reach something miles too far. 

“Luke, hi,” she answered. Her voice was warm and welcoming. He couldn't wrap his mind around the tone of her voice, and before he could fall too deeply into confusion she added, “how’ve you been, how’s Rey?” 

“Rey?” All other thoughts in his brain melted away at the mention of her name. Rey never felt like a secret to him; everyone in their little town knew they had created their own tiny family. No, it wasn't that Rey was a secret; it felt more like a sacred, holy part of himself. He didn't want any part of his past to touch the sanctuary of Luke and Rey’s relationship. And even if he didn't care whether or not Leia knew about her, it wasn't as if Luke had spoken to her at all in the years since he'd moved. Hearing his pseudo- daughter's name threw the phone speaker left him reeling. 

“Sorry - she has a Facebook…” Leia trailed off, and continued after Luke’s speechlessness made it clear that she should clarify. “I was trying to look you up - I know it's silly to think you'd have one,” she laughed and left a roomy pause she hoped Luke would fill with at least a small chuckle. He remained silent, so Leia continued, “well, I found your name in a newspaper article online - it was about Rey winning some award for her school, so I looked her up. There's a lot of pictures of you two. I'm not sure, I mean, I don't know who she is to you, but obviously she’s important… So, she's doing well?”

Luke may have hoped that he'd never have to see his family again, but he couldn't resist answering the question. It was the point of his greatest pride, after wall. “She's great, Leia. I - How are - uh - how are you all?” His voice wavered on “all”. There wasn't an “all” anymore for the Solo’s, Luke had taken that away. 

Leia, ever the diplomat, answered without a hint of the awkwardness Luke was feeling. Han was fine of course, away on business but great. She was busy with work, it was an election year and her schedule was packed with appearances. Luke tried to keep up the small talk. It felt petty, but he'd rather focus on trivial matters than bring up the past between them. 

“I have something serious to ask you, brother,” she said after a few beats of silence. Luke could already tell it would be regarding her son, Ben. The boy whose life he'd ruined thirteen years ago. 

“It's about Ben. He's going through a rough time right now,” Luke could only imagine, “Han and I think he would benefit from going away somewhere. And that it may do you both some good to see each other again.”

“You… Want him to come here?” 

“Yes, Luke. We want to send him to stay with you. Just for the summer.” 

“And he wants to? Ben wants to see me?” 

Leia huffed into the phone, the kind he recognized as a silent “of course! How could you be such an idiot!” She'd mastered that form of communication early on in their youth. The small memory of what it had been like to have a sister, to be able to translate the force of a person’s exhales and inhales into feelings, to have that intimate familiarity between siblings, brought tears to his eyes. Luke's nose burned with the effort it took to not give into the quiver of muscles in his face. 

He'd missed her. He didn't realize how much until that moment. His twin’s voice sounded husky with emotion in her response of, “of course, Luke. Ben has missed you. He loves you.” 

So, that's all he has apparently ever needed to hear. Luke wondered if the passage of time was relevant in his easy decision, or if even days into his move he'd have conceded at the confirmation. Ben wanted to see him. Ben still loved him. Then, yes, of course Luke would agree. 

 

Luke took Rey to town for dinner that night and let her crack open her own lobster and eat it with her fingers. In between dinner and dessert, he told her. 

“Rey,” he started, and he watched her demeanor go from carefree to wary just at the tone of his voice. It reminded him of just hours before when he'd deciphered the sound his sister had made - Rey knew him in that way, too. It was comforting. “You know I have a nephew.”

She nodded, folding her hands in front of her on the table. “Yeah. Ben.” 

“Well, his mom called me today-”

“Leia?” It was as much of an explanation as a question. 

Rey knew the name from the very few occasions he'd brought it up over the years. Once, during a reading of the fourth Harry Potter book as they lay on his bed together before bedtime, Luke had laughed. He'd said, “I'd forgotten this part - my sister…” And Rey had pounced on the new knowledge. It had been her turn to read a page out loud, and the gentle and soft lull of her voice was so soothing that he'd let his internal monologue slip out into the room. “Sister? You have a sister?” After that, she'd quietly ask a question or two until Luke’s demeanor made it clear he didn't wish to speak about her or her family. So, yes, Rey knew that there was a Leia, but not much else besides for the first names of her husband and child. 

“Yes… My sister, Leia.” He scratched at the stubble on his cheek. “His parents and him have decided they want him to spend this summer here, with me.” 

Rey was overjoyed at the prospect. “Wow! Ben is coming! How old is he, Luke?” 

“Geeze, I guess he's eighteen now.” Rey seemed amazed by that, as if the thought of being four years into the future at eighteen herself was an impossibility. 

“Whys he coming here?” Her eyes narrowed in curiosity. 

“I think he's, uh, I guess going through a hard time. I don't know, really.” 

“But being here will help? Being with you?” 

Luke smiled at the adolescent girl he'd raised from childhood. Yes, he had said to her. Being with me will help. But he can only hope it's true. 

 

Ben Solo dressed for efficiency, and the fact that his mother had practically wrestled him into a button down shirt and an unnecessary jacket over it had soured his already poor attitude. 

“Jesus Christ, mom! It's freakin’ July who cares?” He jerked out of her grasp and wriggled his arms inside the sleeves of the jacket. It had been a battle in itself for his mom to let him wear his worn black cargo jacket instead of the crisp khaki she'd pulled out of a Brooks Brothers bag. 

As if his life couldn’t get any worse, he had to spend his last summer before college at a beach house with his uncle he hadn’t seen in years, who Ben was pretty sure hated him. His mom had packed his bags for him and been furious when she saw what he’d done to his duffle bag - two years ago in a fit of rage he’d torn holes in it and then crudely fixed it with duct tape and iron-on patches of his favorite band logos. Ben had walked upstairs to his room to find his bag packed and scoffed at what she’d packed - a disgusting rainbow of pastels; button-downs, polos, cotton shirts with preppy logos, and an outright offensive selection of multi-colored shorts and swim trunks. He’d managed to dump nearly all of them in to the trash can of his bathroom and replaced them with the old jeans, band t - shirts and worn shirts in black and grey. 

Leia had shoved him aside and neatly rearranged his bag. “Honey, I know these are stylish in the city but boys your age in North Carolina wear things like this - you’ll fit in, and - honey, Ben, just look at these shorts! You’ll look so handsome, sweetheart.” She followed him around the room, holding up the clothes he’d discarded and re-folding them to split back into his bag. “I’ll let you pack a few of these old things, okay? DOes that sound fair, honey?”

No, nothing about this situation was fair. For Christ’s sake you accidentally blow up one abandoned building, Ben thinks to himself in exacerbation. 

Leia had made him hug his dad goodbye on the way out the door. Han had been reading a book in the backyard with Chewie at his feet and Ben could practically feel the relief flooding off of him. His dad couldn’t have been happier to have Ben out of the house for the summer. He was basically on vacation already, with a margarita half-empty on the glass table in the garden and indents in the chair cushions Ben suspected would be deeper by the time he returned. 

His mom had stuttered as she reached forwards to press a kiss on his cheek when she drove him to the airport, and Ben rolled his eyes. “You’re the one that’s kicking me out of the house, mom. Don’t fucking cry over it.” 

The sad look in her eyes and turn off her mouth changed at his gruff statement. Leia’s all-too-familiar look of disappoint filled in on her face and it almost made Ben happy. Over the years, he had practically mastered the art of disappointing his mother. If he couldn’t live up to her expectations, he’d simply try and reach for the exact opposite. 

On the plane ride, Ben had folded his tall and thin frame in the seat and listened to music probably too loud for the small space. The businessman next to him glared at him every few minutes when the song changed, and Ben smirked. 

He had a lot of expectations for how the summer would go, and they were all very, very low. His uncle Luke had only left New York City because of a moment in Ben’s childhood he never liked to think or talk about, and he was sure that Luke wouldn’t ever forgive him for it. Ben was also sure that his parents must have begged and pleaded for years over the phone to finally get Luke to agree on Ben staying with him. They were so desperate to get him away from all his “bad influence” friends and gossip that they'd probably paid him.

Ben was expecting, in addition to the scorn and hatred of his uncle, an uncomfortable and unwelcoming greeting at the airport. He'd nervously fumbled to turn on his phone as soon as the plane landed in case he'd need to call his mom and ask for Luke’s address to call a cab because the older man didn't pick him up. 

As he descended the escalator to baggage claim, however, he was neither pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised - he was shocked past the point of being embarrassed. 

The first two people everyone on the escalator could see as the moved down was his Uncle and the girl he'd heard about, searching for him with eager smiles. 

The girl was not really a little girl, as his mom had said. She was certainly small; Ben supposed she was at the right height for a fourteen year old but she was rail-thin, with legs and arms like toothpicks sticking out of a shapeless, skinny torso. Her brown hair was pulled back into a unkept bun, wild baby hairs flying around her face and neck. She had tanned skin that almost made her look like a different ethnicity, and a bright, very young-looking face. Her lips were split into a large grin that showed all of her white teeth, and Ben cringed as she spotted him. The girl struck Luke with one of her bony elbows and he could see her ask, eagerly, “is that him, Luke?” 

He was almost too distracted by the sight of his uncle to notice Rey whip out a big, hand-drawn sign out from behind her that read “Solo, Ben” in bright red marker bordered by multicolored smiley faces, hearts and stars. 

Almost, that is. As soon as he laid eyes on the face he hadn't seen in person in thirteen years, all thoughts left his head. Ben had imagined Luke for years, and in every imagining he saw the look of horror on his face when he saw what Ben had done. He saw the disappointment, the anguish, the hatred and the regret, all directed at him. Ben had even cried over it, sometimes, when he woke up from a nightmare covered in cold sweat and the imprint of the look on Luke’s face etched behind his eyelids. 

To see the exact opposite expression in person made Ben feel like he must be at the wrong airport. That could not be his Uncle Luke, waving and smiling at him. It couldn't be the same man who screamed at him in his nightmares that looked twenty years older and all the more kind for it in person. 

He nearly stumbled off the escalator and was surrounded by Luke’s embrace before he could even think to run in the other direction. How could this be, that Uncle Luke was happy to see him? Happy enough to hug him, to bring along the adolescent girl at his side that was jockeying for a spot in the welcoming hug. 

“Ben,” he heard the familiar voice husk into his ear, “you can't imagine how glad I am to see you.” The voice that called out such horrible things to him in his dreams for the past decade and a half was telling him how good it was to see him? Ben swallowed heavily. It couldn't be real. 

“Uh,” he stuttered out. Ben brought his arms up and around Luke’s shoulders too late, because by the time his sweaty palms made contact with the fabric at his Uncle’s bask he was pulling back and swinging Ben around to face Rey. 

“This is Rey, Ben. She lives with me.” Ben knew that already because of the fierceness with which Leia had told him over and over to be nice to her. 

“Hi,” he managed to mumble. He was so used to speaking to other people with small, uninterested words that even when he wanted to be more articulate he couldn't. 

He watched the girl struggle to keep herself from throwing her arms around him. Ben couldn't say he wouldn't really mind, but his hard exterior kept his body in check - still, stoic and cold. 

“Hi, Ben,” she greeted. “I'm really glad to meet you.” Ben was seconds away from turning and leading them to baggage claim, ignoring the kindness she was throwing his way, but couldn't. He hadn't been shown this level of enthusiasm for being with someone, well, ever, and snubbing the pretty, warm girl in front of him would be a level of cruel Ben wasn't able to display.

He let himself smile, lips together, and raised his shoulders in acknowledgment. “I should get my bag…” Luke insisted on following to the conveyer belt of bags and Ben let himself drift through conversation as they waited. 

Luke asked him, “how was the flight?” and Ben had shrugged. “It was short. So, that's good.”

“I've never been on a plane before. Did you see see any other planes up there? What about the stars?” Rey bit her bottom lip as she glanced up at him.

“Uh, yes,” he answered, and then realized there were two questions he followed up with an awkward, “to both. Stars, and planes.” 

The look Luke and Rey shared did not go unnoticed by Ben, and it reminded him of how he used to look up at his dad. Like when Han had promised that going to a football game was going to be fun, and Ben hadn't believed him. The ten-year old Ben had grumbled and complained until the first touchdown, when the whole stadium erupted into roars and screams of excitement. He'd looked up at his dad, completely caught up in the wonder and glee of the crowd when Ben had never expected to, hadn't believed his dad when he insisted it would be fun. They shared a look, like a silent, “see, son? I told you you'd love it. Just like me.” 

Ben swallowed around a lump forming in his throat and tore his eyes from the pair beside him. He didn't dare to hope the look they exchanged had the same sentiment - that Rey was telling Luke, “I love Ben already. Just like you said I would. Just like you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am Really taking to heart each comment that you guys leave me. Every single one is so encouraging and I smile like a big idiot when I read them.   
> Please please keep them coming!


	5. Familiarity and Embarrassment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't THINK this chapter warrants a warning, but if someone thinks otherwise please let me know and I'll update accordingly.

A week into Ben’s summer with his Uncle Luke and he was pretty sure that older man must have been some kind of doppelgänger. Even without the shadow of tragedy hanging over him, Luke was very different from what Ben remembered. He laughed easily and freely - his uncle had always been very serious even before everything happened. Luke spoke in between smiles and laughed at things only very happy people did; sunny mornings, lightening storms in clouds that reflected across the vast ocean, the way Rey ate her cereal, and nearly ever time Ben tried to skim board. He was comfortable around with Ben in a way he couldn’t be even with his closest friends at home. It unnerved him, even seven days later. 

The days had passed with ease, and Ben had been fully prepared to be unwelcome and uncomfortable the entire summer. When Rey had lead them into the house on the first day, she’d eagerly said, “I’ll show you your room, Ben!”

He’d followed her around a house also completely not what he had been expecting. For some reason, he was thinking that Luke’s house would be all streamlined with metal appliances, bare walls and sleek, scarce furniture. Instead, it was bright and well-lived in. There were colorful rugs in different styles and the windows were big and spaced out along the walls facing the ocean. There were small piles of mail on the kitchen table and from the short glimpse he had of the refrigerator, there were drawings and report cards held up by decorative magnets. The hallway the teenage girl led him down was lined with different sized pictures of her, Luke and the both of them together. Rey was walking too fast for him to get a good look at any one in particular, but he could see enough of them to understand that Rey was a permanent and loved part of the household. There were gap-toothed, younger versions of her and little Rey’s in tutu’s dancing across stages. Some of them had her standing with a team in matching uniforms, and other’s were her alone, standing on a field with both hands on her hips and one skinny leg propped up on a soccer ball. She got older the farther down the hallway they went, the years marked by pictures of Luke and Rey standing together at birthday parties. There were older versions of her holding trophies and both of them goofily pointing at them, beaming into the camera at various activities. 

Three of the rooms they passed were clearly a bathroom, Luke’s room and Rey’s room respectively, and just the fact that their doors were open spoke volumes to Ben about the atmosphere in their home. There were no secrets, no areas of the house designated for only one person to get away from everyone else. Ben’s parents’ door was never open, and their offices each were locked to only the two of them. Ben hardy ever left his own door open, and especially never when he wasn't in it, like Rey and Luke had both left theirs. It felt open and loving in a way he’d never felt in his own home, and he had only been there for a few minutes.

Rey stopped at the last door and Ben nearly ran into her. He was very tall for his age, and it seemed like Rey was a bit tall for fourteen as well, but he still towered over her, like he did with most people. She laughed lightly at the awkward way he backed up from her. At least, that's what he thought she was laughing at. Rey was a bit elusive in her laughter, because it came so easy to her as far as he could tell. “This is yours,” she said, motioning him inside. 

He stood in the middle of the room and looked around in a kind of awe. The room had clearly gotten used mostly as an office until Ben’s arrival was announced. One entire wall was lined with ceiling-to-floor bookshelves, all overstuffed with textbooks and little trinkets. There was an old desk pushed against a wall and beneath the window Ben could tell was where the desk used to sit - four large indents in the carpet indicated it. There was a bed that was almost too big for the room lined up against the middle of one wall. The fact that Luke had bought him a brand new bed was staggering, and he marveled again at the fact that Luke was so happy to see him, and not at all angry. 

Not only that - as if a brand new queen-sized bed for someone just staying three months wasn't enough - Luke and Rey had decorated the entire room with things his mom obviously told them he liked. There were posters of his favorite bands taped to the walls and black curtains lining each window. He could tell they were new because the creases from being folded into little squares at the store still lined them. A closet was against the wall by the door to the room and the double doors were slung wide open with brand new, wooden hangers hanging on the empty rod. 

Ben could feel Rey’s eyes on him as he took in his brand new room. “Uh, you guys really put a lot of effort into this, huh?”

He turned to face her and let his duffle bag and backpack fall to the ground. Rey stepped forwards. “We want to make you feel at home. We’re both really excited to have you, Ben.” He smiled at her, her enthusiasm and happiness was infectious despite his nearly lifelong efforts to never look outwardly happy. Rey was practically his exact opposite; he was wearing black jeans and old, black Converse shoes. He had a grey, light button-down on underneath a black jacket and his entire demeanor was dark and brooding. Rey, on the other hand, was practically golden. Her tanned skin glowed and her easy smile, even when not showing, teased at the corners of her mouth. There wasn’t a moment when Ben’s awkwardness and unwillingness to get to know her felt justified in the face of her brightness and unwavering, kind enthusiasm. 

“Well… thanks, Rey. It looks nice.” She clapped her hands together in glee. “Great! When you finish unpacking, maybe we can go to the beach together? Or we can walk to the pier and get ice cream! I’ll just be in my room, okay?”

She barely left time for a response before scurrying out with a small wave. Ben cleared his throat into the small room and moved to begin unpacking his hodge podge of preppy and edgy clothing. He got lost in the task, almost done with hanging his shirts and pants onto the hangers when a knock rang out against his open door. 

“Ben, hi.” Luke greeted him, and Ben sat on his bed, motioning for his uncle to join him. “Hi, Uncle Luke.”

“Just Luke, Ben. That’s too much of a mouthful, don’t you think?” Luke folded himself cleanly and gracefully onto the corner of the bed. Ben shrugged. It was hard to speak with any casualty to his Uncle, the history between them was like a tangible, ugly thing sitting between them on the bed. 

“Yeah. I guess so.” 

“Listen, Ben, I know there’s things we should talk about, things we need to say,” Luke paused to presumably gauge Ben’s reaction. He put in an embarrassing amount of effort to keep his face still. He agreed, of course; Ben had a lot he wanted to say to his Uncle. Things like “sorry” and “how can you even look at me?” But Luke took a deep breath and seemed to say the exact right thing to put Ben at ease. “But, for now, just know that I’m so glad you’re here, and I want you to have fun this summer, okay?”

Ben just barely manages a small smile. So, that was it, then. 'For now' there would be no talk of Ben's childhood and the last time he'd seen his Uncle. No discussion over the incident with his friends that landed him miles away from his home for the entire summer. Luke was willing, and even happy, to cast all of that aside and let Ben have fun for the summer. He brooded, for a long time as he laid back on his new bed, about how that would even be possible. What, was he supposed to hang out with the man he barely knew or the teenage girl who'd hardly hit puberty? The town had a lot of tourisits - maybe he could get lucky and find some guys like him, and a few hot girls his age on vacation together. Ben soothed him self with daydreams of a summer filled with the same disregard for authority and love of generally hating everyone and everything. But then, a small sound from the room next to his - Rey's - broke him out of his fantasy. It sounded like a drawer closing, and as he listened more intensely, the soft padding of her feet moved around the hardwood floors. Ben remembered that she'd been nothing but nice to him, was so excited that he was there, had asked him questions about himself with genuine interest in the car ride to their home, and had said she'd wait for him to go to the beach. Ben remembered that his dad, who hardly ever had serous conversations with him anymore, had sat him down own and told him to try and get as much out of this summer as he possibly could; soak up all the new experiences and scenery and try and to come away a better person than he arrived. He'd rolled his eyes, but Ben recalled how only a few minutes ago he'd been wondering where to get replicas of his friends from back home. It was immature, and he felt ashamed by it. He took a deep breath and knocked on Rey’s open door. 

She had changed her outfit and pulled her loose hair into a high ponytail. She had a big t-shirt on with a vaguely familiar whale logo emblazoned on the front pocket and the strings of a bikini top were pocking out of the top behind her neck. “Are you all settled?” she’d asked, slipping on a pair of worn flip-flops that were just inside the doorframe and leading him out through the back of the house to the walkway to the beach. 

“Yeah. I don’t have that many clothes,” Ben answered, trailing along behind her. “I don’t think I’m really prepared to be living this close to the beach, though.”

Rey turned to face him at his comment. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not even wearing pants right now,” he motioned to her bare legs. She wasn’t wearing pants, her shirt long enough to reach to her thighs, and the strings of her bathing bottoms swung as she walked against both of her legs. Rey laughed at him and he said through a matching smile, “and all I brought were jeans.” 

They spent the rest of the afternoon, until Luke announced they’d be eating out for Ben’s first night with them, walking up and down the beach with Rey telling him about her friends and school and what sports she played. He was happy to listen, happy to be having fun, happy to be so relieved that the experience was nothing close to what he thought it would be. She was a cute kid, eager to learn and more eager to prove herself. She had a good head on her shoulders, and Ben wondered if Luke's influence in his life would have made him the same way had things gone differently in his youth. 

As Ben followed Rey up the steps to the house and let her hose off his feet of all the sand, he couldn’t believe that he’d been so anxious and scared to be spending three months with this little family. He thought back to Luke, hours ago, saying his only job this summer was to have fun. Later on, as he watched Luke and Rey hysterically laugh over some joke she’d made about the menu at the small restaurant, Ben didn’t think that would be hard to do at all. 

 

It turned out that it wasn’t hard to do. The first summer with Rey and Luke went by much too fast. It was a flurry of ice cream cones at the pier and being woken up at ungodly early hours by Rey to do some kind of outdoor activity. It was a beautiful symphony of laughter, shrieks when someone splashed water on someone else, and waves crashing onto the shore. 

He wondered how it happened so fast, how a fourteen-year old girl and a man he’d always thought hated him had turned Ben into a completely different person in just a matter of weeks. Instead of the angsty, troubled eighteen-year that had arrived at the airport that first day, he’d be returning as an easy to laugh, kinder, better person. 

He would be taking home memories that he cherished; Luke letting him read his latest manuscripts and talking to him in a rocking chair late into the early morning hours, listening to the waves and watching the moon reflect on the rippeling view of unobstructive water. They never brought up what still sat between them, never even skimming it's surface, but spoke a lot about the stupid decision that lead his parents to send him there. 

"And tell me about Hux, Ben? What's he like?" 

Ben had explained, in the way only a teenager could that, "I don't know... Hux is - we're not really that close. My parents, they both think we're like best friends. But, we were both introduced by this older guy, he's like four or five years older. It's not like we even get along that well. Hux, I mean. We just hang out a lot because... I don't know. Just because." Ben stared at the blackness of the indistinguishable sand and ocean and rocked in his chair. Luke made a soft sound of understanding and remained silent for a long while. He'd turned to face him, though Ben couldn't really see any details of his face.

"This older boy... You looked up to him?" Luke's tone held a hint of solomness. Ben had no choice but to be honest, even as he felt ashamed to admit it. What was some loser, trouble-making, cynical kid as a role model when compared to Luke Skywalker? "Yeah. I did."

"But not anymore?"

"No, Luke. Not anymore." The conversation got lighter after that, and Ben explained with great detail about what happened the night everything went to hell. Snoke, a nickname Ben felt humiliated at once having thought was bad-ass and dark, had been pissed at some guy who sold drugs in the same area he dealt, and had invited Ben and all their friends over to his creepy apartment and gotten them all drunk. Ben had been a little high, too, and it had been all to easy to convince him to sneak across town and torch a building the rival owned. Snoke used to say jump and Ben and Hux would compete over who asked how high first, and who jumped the highest. Hux had lost that night, and Ben had been beside himself with pride until he'd laid eyes on his parents. 

Ben explained to Luke, nearly getting emotional, that "I've never seen either of them look at me that way before. We've never really gotten along, but... I really messed up that night. Really dissapointed them."

Luke patted his hand over Ben's fingers. "We all disappoint the people we love in some way or another, Ben. All you can do now is face your responsibilities and do your best to show them that you have changed. And, I believe you have changed, Ben. Do you?"

Ben did. He'd changed, and he wanted to go home and show that to the parents he'd let down. But more than that, he desperately wanted to stay. He pushed the thought out of his mind viciously, but as the weeks went by he felt an intense need to never leave grow stronger ever day. 

More moments happened that made his heart hurt in his chest, both in their beauty and in the stark reminder that soon he would be leaving all of it behind. Rey was part of nearly every one. She teased him, tugged on his ears and pressed cold, wet kisses to his cheeks in apology. When he swam in the ocean with her or let her try and teach him some new method of riding an apparatus on the water, Rey was patient and goofy in her teachings. Luke let him drive his car but the only places he ever went were to pick up and drop off Rey at friends houses, or take her some place she'd ask him too. He put on an act sometimes of annoyance, but never for long. The way Rey smiled at him, thanked him and enthused about the time she'd had or how much fun they'd have, didn't allow for anything but happiness in return. Ben never felt anything but the purest kind of companionship and love for her. Even when she did things like play music too loud or leave wet bathing suits hanging in the shower, Ben could do nothing but shake his head in a tolerant kind of endearment. 

She took him to the beach nearly every day and sometimes brought him along to see her friends. Rey was smart, smarter than him, and her friends were similar in that manner. She was four years younger but only two grade levels behind him, so Rey had a lot of friends her age and a lot that were older. Luke told him once, as their house was quickly filling with bathing-suit clad teenagers, that it had worried him when she was younger but Rey was such a good kid that now that she was older, he trusted her taste in friends implicitly.

As was typical for a rainy evening, Ben and Rey were laying on the carpeted floor of the living room while Luke wrote in his room. He had a deadline coming up, the last half of his latest novel, and had ordered pizza and demanded they leave him alone for the rest of the evening. 

Rey had a bunch of friends, but the only two that she’d really introduced Ben to were Poe and Finn, two boys in between both Rey and Ben’s spaced out ages. Ben found them not nearly as intolerable as he’d have thought. Finn was goofy in a way that he’d have made fun of at his high school, and Poe was the typical jock, panty-melting kid that Ben would have hated. 

But, because Rey loved both of them so much he couldn’t do anything but get along with them. It wasn't very hard, either. They were both very easy to talk to and generally interesting people. Both of them were over, and Rey was intently watching a documentary on lions while the three boys were quietly talking about Poe’s latest conquest. 

Rey was fourteen, but to all three of the boys in her life - four, counting Luke - she was just as innocent as a elementary school girl. She was like a little sister, but not annoying, so things that had anything to do with sex or partying was off limits as long as her ears were in range. Rey had fun with her friends, but one of the things that humbled him the most about being in her presence at all was that she always loved more, laughed more, smiled more and was loved by many more and did it all without trying and without deterring from the gold with which she was strung. 

For some reason, though, in the same room as Rey they were choosing to listen to Poe talk about the date he’d gone on the night before. Ben, the most protective of all of them over Rey, didn’t understand where Poe’s story was going until it was too late. The phrase “she gave me a blowjob” slipped out of Poe’s mouth just as Rey was turning and crawling across the carpet towards them and to all of their horrors, she repeated it with a question. “What’s a blowjob?” She was on her knees and leaning forwards on her hands. She was interrupting with a casualty like she'd just asked the definition of a foreign type of cheese.

Ben wanted to crush her to him, cage her in his arms, stroke her hair and praise her for her complete niavety. Rey was such a good kid, much better than he’d been at her age, and although he was horrified that she’d over heard, he was immensely grateful that her innocence and goodness had prevented her from ever even knowing about the act of a “blowjob” until that moment. “Oh, shit,” Finn mumbled from behind him. 

“It’s nothing, Rey. It’s - it’s a candy. This girl gave me a piece of candy,” Poe’s hurried and panicked tone made it very obvious that he was lying, and Rey raised herself up on her bare knees and crossed her arms over her chest. “No it’s not. Tell me.”

Finn and Poe laughed at how uncomfortable the situation had just gotten, and Ben vaguely wondered if he hadn’t been there and the topic came up if they’d tell her or not. He sensed a flash of hurt across her face and winced; Rey felt that they were making fun of her and she turned to him. “Ben?” She asked, clearly expecting that he would answer. 

“No, no, no, Rey. You don’t need to know. It’s- it’s-” He fumbled for words, but Rey’s righteous indignation interrupted him. “It’s too adult for me? I’m fourteen you know! You guys treat me like a baby sometimes, I swear, it’s so annoying!” 

Finn reached for her and she shrugged him away, angrily. “Aw, come on, Rey. We didn’t mean for you to hear that. I promise, we aren’t trying to patronize you-”

“But you are! You don't think I'm mature enough!” She rounded on Poe next who threw up his hands in the air. “Hey, get as mad as you want, Rey, I'm not telling you what it means.”

Rey fumed for a few moments before standing up and looking at all three of them in fury. “If you don't tell me what 'blowjob' means then I'll - I'll…” She trailed off before making eye contact with Ben and raising her chin. “If you don't tell me, Ben Solo, I'll tell Luke that I gave you a blowjob, right now!”

Ben froze in complete shock, openings and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, which was a mild way to describe how he felt. Poe and Finn burst into shocked laughter, rolling around on their backs and howling. “Damn!” Finn shouted, “that is cold, dude!” Poe added on with tears in his eyes, “you've gotta tell her now, Ben.”

Ben clenched his fists at his side and lurched forwards, grabbing Rey by her thin shoulders and glaring down at her. “Don't fucking do that, Rey. Jesus. You have no idea... I'd get in so much trouble - Fuck! Stop laughing," he whipped his head around to face the pair of baffoons behind him. Ben glared furiously, and then all at once turned it on her. "Why the hell are you so curious, for Christ’s sake?” 

Rey’s smirk was smug and proud, and she looked at him expectantly after shrugging. “Well, Ben? What does it mean?"

He shot a furious look at Finn and Poe again. They were muffling their guffaws of laughter, and Poe egged him on. “Yeah, Ben. I'd love to hear you explain it.” 

Seeing no way out other than honesty, he sat back down and miserably tried to explain with the least explicit detail as he could. “It's - a blowjob, it's - uh, fuck. Rey, stop standing over me like that!” She sighed in frustration and sat down on the floor, filling in the circle of the four of them. “It's when a - when a man, a guy has a girlfriend. Or, whatever, has a significant other- it's when the whoever puts the boy’s, uh - puts their, you know,” he pauses to look at Rey and can see that she isn't even laughing at his struggle like Poe and Finn clearly are. She honestly has no clue, is so far away from being attuned to that kind of relationship, still so pure and sweet and innocent that she has no idea at all. It breaks his heart and makes him all the more furious at the situation. 

Ben took a deep breath in through his nose and started again, somehow summoning wisdom and maturity beyond what he thought capable of ever having, and began again with a new angle. “Rey, I don't think you're ready to hear this, yet. Can I just - if I just say it's something you do with someone you love when you're both ready and old enough and comfortable enough to do it - if I say that, can that please be enough? Just, for now?” 

Rey’s facial expressions had changed so much over the past several minutes that he was struck again by the open book she is. She'd gone from anger, to genuinely curious, to the expression of satisfaction she wore now with an ease Ben would never be able to do. 

Poe and Finn had gone quiet, and he wondered if they felt as ashamed of the whole situation as he did at the moment. Rey, amazingly, shrugs a shoulder and moves back to where she had been laying before. “Fine, Ben. I don't even care that much anyway.” She went back to learning about lions in Africa as if nothing happened. 

The rest of the night moved smoothly despite the hiccup and Rey hardly moved to say goodbye to Poe and Finn when they left. Ben saw them out and settled down on the couch with Rey’s feet in between his knees as she swung them in the air from her place on her stomach. 

Ben rolled his eyes at the irony of seeing lions mating on the tv screen, but Rey didn't even realize the parallel. The intimate familiarity he'd grown accustomed to was so calming to him that he found himself not really caring either. Her ankles playfully slapped against the insides of his knees and at their favorite commercial, she turned her head and looked back at him on the couch to grin at him conspiratorially. 

It was the kind of relationship he'd watched between one of his few friends and their little siblings, the kind that could only blossom and grow under the roof of a comfortable, loving, and caring home. He was comfortable with her in a unique and special way. Instances like silently handing over a toothbrush and sharing the mirror at night when they both brushed their teeth, or not even flinching when she reached clear across him, elbowing him in the chin to grab a waffle off the big plate Luke made every Thursday morning and not even pausing in a conversation with Luke he was having were now special, but special only in their mundanity. Like, when Ben was eating potato chips and she was eating cookies, she could tug the bag out of his hand and switch it with the cookies without even a word or glance his way, and Ben would accept the trade without pause because Rey knew that he liked both. Or, Rey could come inside from swimming in the ocean with her friends in her bathing suit, wrapped in a towel, and plop down on the couch beside him and watch tv without even a greeting, and sometimes Ben wouldn't even recognize that she was there until hours later, because he was so intensely comfortable with her that he didn't need to look up from the sound of her familiar footsteps. 

It was the best summer he'd ever had, and everything was going perfectly, miles beyond every expectation. There were two weeks left when Ben ruined it all.


	6. Pancakes and Sharp Daggers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALERT ALERT!!!! I have SERIOUSLY updated chapter 5. There is an extra scene (one is REALLY important and addresses an important subplot) or two or three (I can't remember) and I edited the crap out of it. I honestly think I might have had a stroke or something when I wrote it, it was horrible and wrought with bad grammar and story telling. It's still not exactly where I want it to be but I think What i've done to chapter 5 is significant enough that you should re-read it, if you can. I promise, it's worth it! SO if you have read the chapter earlier than 2:00am CST on March 29th, then it has been REVAMPED and I HIGHLY recommend that you go back and re-read it before you read this one.

Growing up, Han used to say to Ben, “don’t ruin a good thing, son.” He would say it in anticipation of a fit being thrown, or asking for something his parents wouldn't or couldn't do, after they'd already been having fun. He could remember several times that his dad murmured the bite of wisdom at Ben, and he seldom ended up listening anyway. Once, when Ben turned ten and his parents took him to an amusement park all day on a school day, he began asking if they could stay until the park closed, even though it was past his bedtime. Even though both of his parents had taken a day off of work, a gift in itself, and even when he'd have been grateful to simply not go to school and watch cartoons all day. They’d said no, of course, and Ben grew angry and impatient, escalating and feeling the fraying edges of his temper start to snap. Han had placed a hand on his shoulder and said, almost sadly, “Ben, don’t go ruining a good thing, kid.”

Several more times throughout his life, he’d been told that until good things pretty much stopped happening altogether. Until, of course, he ended up staying with Luke all summer. As the time came to a close leaving only two weeks left, Ben felt panic creep into his consciousness. 

He did not want to leave his uncle or Rey, and Ben felt the ache to stay so deep in his bones that he knew he’d do anything to prolong the visit. He lay in his bed with the cool blue of the cloudy, early morning sun dimly lighting his room. Ben felt his heart pounding in anxiety. He'd be leaving in exactly fourteen days from that day, and the rage that had once been his constant companion back in New York seemed to seep into him, like a dark shadow sinking down into his body and filling every part of him.

The anger felt comfortable, a well worn sweater, a baby blanket he'd dragged around with him most of his life. He'd cast the small comfort away for that summer, instead finding solace and serenity in the small family he'd grown to love, but the prospect of having to leave left him reaching again for the tempting emotion. Ben clenched his fists and stared at the ceiling. 

Rey would be up soon, as she always woke fast and furious and ready to start her day. She'd sprint into his room and shake him away, sometimes singing him a sweet wake-up song that someone - probably Luke, the only adult seemingly in her life at all - used to sing to her. “Lazy Ben, will you get up,” she'd croon into his ear, tugging lightly on his ears or nose or fingers. Sometimes, Rey would leap onto his bed and startle him out of sleep with her full body weight on top of his. “Ben!” Rey would shout on those occasions, “time to get up!” 

On that morning, though, he heard Rey wake up from the open door of his room through the open door of hers. She didn't spring up out of bed as she usually did with her fit hitting the floor. Instead, curiously, he listened as Rey must have shuffled quietly around her room for a while before slipping into the hallway. She appeared in the shadowed hallway just outside his door and murmured, sleepily, “Ben.”

He watched her from where his head stuck out of the blankets as she observed him for a few quiet moments before walking towards him, slowly and with shuffling feet, and stood by his head. Rey wore a pair of cotton sleep shorts from her childhood emblazoned with pictures of Violet from The Incredibles and her legs stuck out like toothpicks from them. Her shirt was faded, old and billowy around her slim frame, it shifted as she climbed on to his bed and curled up next to him. 

Ben was not too surprised by this, as Rey had fallen asleep in his bed before. Sometimes they watched YouTube videos on her laptop together, stretched out on his bed with the computer between them, cackling at silly things on the Internet. Other times, they'd stay up talking about drama with her friends (never having to do with her, as Rey was perfect, obviously) or some story she wanted to share, and she'd pass out with drool on his pillow, and Ben’s body curved around the bed to accommodate her. Ben was embarrassingly invested in what went on in her group of friends. 

Ben didn't have to move to let her lay down, and he rolled over onto his back. Rey nudged his calf with her foot over the blanket. “I don't want you to leave.”

Instead of saying “me too” Ben sighed wearily and sat up in the bed, nearly throwing her off with the sudden rise of the blanket she was laying on. “You won't notice that I'm gone, with school and everything.” 

“Yeah I will. I'm really going to miss you.” She whined into his pillow. 

Ben let the anger he'd coaxed out of himself earlier spill out, and he got out of the bed and stood by the door. “Well, Rey, we all knew this was just going to be for the summer. Better start getting used to it.”

She rolled over and faced him, propping herself up on her hands and looking at him with narrowed eyes. “That doesn't mean I can't be sad about it.”

“Right,” he kicked open the door further and motioned obnoxiously for her to leave. “I need to get dressed.” 

Rey stalked out of his room, and he hesitated for only a moment before shutting the door behind her. It seem symbolic to him, closing himself off in his room in the house where no doors were ever closed - save the bathroom. Ben heard her pause outside when she heard the click of the door. It made him happy, despite also feeling horrible - he shouldn't have got gotten attached, because he'd have to go back home to his parents after Luke and Rey had spent all summer opening Ben up and letting him grow, mature, blossom into the kind and loving person he'd started to become. 

How can I go back home like this? Nothing has changed there, only me. And Ben had always been sure of the fact that the problem wasn't him, it was everyone else. He'd still be miserable at home, his parents would still be there the same as they usually were, and suddenly the last three months seemed like a complete waste of time. 

He'd had fun, yeah, and part of him had healed a little bit having so much time with Luke, and Rey had been a joy to spend time with - but all for what? Just for him to return home and be miserable all over? Ben felt cheated out of the life he could have had fifteen years ago - he'd been given a taste of unconditional love and support, and a family he felt truly at home with, and it was all being ripped away.

Ben stood in the middle of the room and had to restrain himself from destroying something. He was furious, and he fully embraced the emotion with open arms. His skin buzzed with it, his mind reeled. How dare Luke take him in, give him advice and hope for his future and deny him all of that for the last decade and a half? How could he do all that, while taking in some random girl Ben honestly had no idea where she came from, who her parents were, why she was even with Luke in the first place. How could he love and raise Rey into the shining and spectacular person she was becoming, and abandon him with his grieving parents and never even mention anything that happened all those years ago. 

Ben wanted to kick open the door and demand answers, demand that Luke explain what he was thinking back then, and why, instead of spending time with him when Ben needed it the most, he'd chosen Rey instead. 

He wanted to hurt Rey, remind her of her real place in the family and that she didn't even belong there in the first place. He wanted to her to be as lost and turmoiled as him, because Rey had Luke and he'd never even gotten the chance to have a relationship with his uncle. 

His mouth formed a snarl and he tore open the doors to his closet, flipping through the preppy and “respectable” clothes his mom made him bring - clothes he'd been wearing for weeks now - to find the things he'd worn at home. Black and long and comforting. 

Ben got dressed quickly, fully prepared to the breakfast table and ruin everything he'd built and had been built for him that summer. He wanted them to be so angry and hurt and horrified by him that he was asked to leave that very day. 

There was no way, now that Ben had unleashed his insecurities and fears and self-doubts, he'd be able to spend another two weeks with either of them. 

 

Luke heard Rey as she sleepily trudged into Ben’s room in the early morning hours and let the sound of her familiar waking up habits motivate him to get up himself. Most days Ben and Rey are cereal, but he only had two weeks left with them and he'd endeavor to make pancakes or waffles as many mornings as he could. 

He went to the kitchen down the hall and didn't expect to see Rey for another hour, and not without Ben in tow. 

Only a few minutes later, he heard her huff out of his room and the door close seconds after, and she appeared in the kitchen with an annoyed look on her face. “Ben woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something.”

Luke hummed in acknowledgment and poured the batter he'd mixed onto a skillet on the stove. “Sometimes that happens when you’re a teenager, Rey. You’ve had some bad mornings, as I recall.”

She good naturedly rolled her eyes at him and peeled open a banana. “I guess.” Luke sensed that she was going to say something else and eyed her, looking from the cooking pancakes and the girl slowly chewing on a mouthful of food. She swallowed, put her chin in her hand, and said, quietly, “He shut his door, though.”

“Don’t dwell on it, sunshine.” She smiled with a closed mouth, but Luke was unsure if it was rooted in the endearment he used for her on occasion or that she was somehow comforted by this words. 

They spoke quietly about how one of her friends, Jessika, was in a huge fight with her parents about how poorly she'd done summer school. Luke piled perfect pancake after pancake on a big dish and placed it in front of her eager hands just as Ben stomped into the kitchen. 

He was, to Luke’s surprise, wearing clothes similar to the ones he'd arrived in - ripped pants, black - and a scowl he hadn't seen in months. “Good morning, Ben,” he greeted carefully, pushing a clean plate in the bar stool he usually took next to Rey. 

“Is it? Hadn't noticed.” His voice was short and clipped and Luke blinked instead of answering. He saw Rey give Ben a weird look out of the corners of her eyes, and Luke realized what was probably going to happen.

Ben didn't wake up on the wrong side of the bed, he was angry. Very angry about something - Luke could guess but he was never able to exactly pin down his nephew. The hairs on the back of his neck stood, and he felt tension rise and fill the room with the appearance of the brooding figure. 

Ben seemed to find their reactions amusing. Rey had scooted away from him, her usually confident and easy posture going rigid and uncomfortable in her chair. Luke watched, feeling anxiety pull at his nerves, as Ben fed off of the discomfort he was causing Rey.

The only sound heard in the little kitchen was the tiny scrapes of forks on plates. Until Ben spoke up. 

Luke knew from the moment his nephew opened his mouth, he should have diffused the situation. He should have asked Rey to leave the room, maybe even the house all together, and had all the hard conversations he owed Ben right then and there. Luke should have interrupted him, but instead, he watched in a kind of outward observer haze as Ben tore into the girl he loved as his own child. 

It happened with a few sentences, barely a dozen words. “Rey,” Ben had asked with a wolfish grin and turning to her in a similar manner, “where are your parents? You've never said.”

She nearly gasped, and stuttered out something that could have been “what” but also could have been “um.” 

“I’m just curious, when they're coming to get you. Don't you think it's sort of rude - leaching off a man you barely know?” Ben spoke like he had perfectly calculated a statement he knew would cut into her with a surgical precision. 

Luke and Rey spoke at the same time, her squeaking out, “leaching? No, Ben, it’s-” and Luke gasped in outrage, scolding Ben, “she knows me, Ben. This is Rey’s home! How dare you-”

He interrupted them both as he stood up, towering over them, like a long casted shadow against a wall. Ben ignored Rey’s defense and addressed Luke’s instead. He stood over Rey, who was bracing her arms on the back of her chair and staring up at him, as white as Luke could remember seeing her. “This isn't her home! She doesn't belong here, Uncle! What are you - just a foster kid who charmed her way into a rich neighbors house, keeping him away from people who are actually part of this family. You're nothing, Rey, no one wants you!”

Luke’s angry shouts of, “Ben, stop this! Now!” were met with deaf ears. Rey was wilting before him, turning in on herself right in front of his eyes. If just some person at school said that to her, Luke knew that she would make herself taller, raise her chin in the regal way she did without trying, and say something wise beyond her years to defend herself, to correct the person and put them in their place. 

But this was Ben saying those things, the boy who drove her around in his car and bought her ice cream. The boy who threw her into the deep end of pools and dove in after to apologize with indulgences. Ben had mastered the art of making Rey laugh, getting her to open up, knowing exactly what to say and do at the right time to make her happy. He could practically write a dissertation on the essence of her, what was floating in her brain and etched in the veins of her heart. He had become her fiercest protector, her confidant and friend, her goofy, sincere and endearing roommate all summer and, Luke suspected, her first real crush. And now, he was using all of that closeness and trust against her; everything he’d worked so hard to learn and pull from her to make Rey feel loved and love him back he was twisting and forming into a jagged, grotesque blade. 

As Ben drove it into her heart, Luke could do nothing to stop it. He scrambled to get around the kitchen island and pull Rey away from him, get himself in between the people who had become the two halves of his heart, and yell over Ben’s words. Rey let herself be tugged out of the chair that Ben was practically pressing up against and shoved a hand out to press into Ben’s chest. 

“How can you be so cruel, Ben?” He was aiming for disappointment, but Ben deflected it, and for some reason that made him ache for both of them even more. Ben was used to feeling like a disappointment, and that was in large part because of him. 

“How can I-” Ben’s voice went quiet in disbelief, shaking his head at Luke in wonder and disgust. “Me, cruel?” He leaned around Luke to look at Rey again and said, “It’s cruel of you to pretend like you’re doing anything but playing house with this girl. You-you- abandoned your real family, abandoned me and mom, made me feel like a fucking murderer my entire life and never even tried to talk to me about it - instead you’ve been taking in strays!” 

Rey shuddered, visibly at his words, and backed away from the both of them. Luke could feel her pulling away, feel Ben’s targeted words hit her exactly where he meant to, as Rey began to doubt even the trust she had put in Luke for nearly half of her life. Ben’s breath came out raggedly, and he grew angrier at Luke’s speechlessness. “What, nothing to say? What a surprise, Uncle!”

At the same time, behind him, Rey’s voice whispered, heartbroken and watery and shaky, murmured, “Luke…” It wasn’t a question, or in effort get his attention. It was a plea, maybe not even to him, a desperate effort in convincing herself that what Ben had just said was not true. 

Luke turned his head to see where Rey stood in the room, and found her backed up against the wall and gripping blindly for the sliding glass door. She looked every bit the same as the girl he’d known when he first met her. Young and unsure of herself, unsure of her place in the world and where she belonged; to whom she belonged. In the less than a second he looked at her over his shoulder, Rey had regressed back into that lost little girl - Ben had cast the shadow of doubt over her, and she was falling into it blindly, unable to reconcile his words within herself. 

“Don’t look at her! Look at me! I'm your nephew, she’s nothing, she doesn’t matter!” The slight shake in his voice, the flash of something other than anger in his eyes, tore Luke’s eyes to face him. And that motion had apparently, understandably, answered Rey’s question. 

Luke had chosen Ben, so she must not matter. She slipped out of the house, and it happened too fast for Luke to even turn back around in time to watch her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for reading and for all the kind words. Things go up from here, promise ;)


	7. Resolution and Conflict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your comments are keep me going you guys. I have had serious writers block, and I'm drop dead tired right now. I honestly don't know if I'll finish writing this sentence before I fall asleep. I'll certainly be sleeping in bed with my laptop tonight, because there's no way I can leam over any time soon to place it under my bed.

Luke was being torn into two; did he go after Rey, who was hurting more than he could imagine, or Ben, who caused her pain, but who was hurting, too? Ben, whom he owed answers and explanations too. Or Rey, who’d only known a stable and loving home in Luke. 

Ben seemed to already know that Luke would go after her, and the hurt on his face beneath all of the anger clouding it made Luke shudder. The quiver of his lip, as if he was holding back a snarl, and the narrowing of his eyes as he studied Luke’s face told of what he was trying to figure out. 

The fact that Ben was expecting his rejection made it perfectly clear what his twisted goal had been from the very beginning - he was trying to drive them both away; Rey, by hurting her in the cruelest way Ben knew how, and Luke would have no choice but to go to Rey instead - Ben’s entire convoluted plan was hedged on Luke loving Rey more. 

But, did he? Would that even matter? Luke had no idea if he could boil down the last fifteen years of his life into something as simple, as profound as that. Rey had, without even trying, dragged him out of the abyss he’d lived in and given him the most precious of gifts. He needed her just as she needed him, and he was sure there was no familial love which existed more powerful, fierce, and pure than what he shared with Rey. 

Ben, though, was as important to him as her. He was his nephew; Luke had been there the moment he’d been born, waiting there for hours as his twin sister gave birth to him. He’d cradled Ben in his arms and brushed a finger over his fine, dark hair and rosy cheeks. Luke had watched the way Han turned away from the whole family because his eyes were wet at just the site of his tiny, newborn son. Luke was the one that Han thrust Ben at when a doctor had rushed into the waiting room and said to Han, “Your wife is giving birth again, there’s another baby!” Luke had laughed, sniffling and cradled the baby closer to his chest; he'd whispered, “did you hear that? You have a brother.” He’d been there nearly every day of the first five years of his life, and then selfishly left Ben to grieve on his own. How could Luke do that again, when he was so clearly suffering now?

He’d already abandoned Luke once, when he needed his reassurance and guidance, and because of that selfishness, he’d unintentionally turned Ben into what he was before him. Luke took a deep breath to try and calm himself, and sent out a prayer to the universe that Rey could hold on and be brave and strong for just a little while on her own. He hoped that she would forgive him for choosing to stay with Ben, even for just a few minutes and even though he was the one whose words had broken her. 

“Did that make you feel better, Ben?”

“Do you honestly think I give a shit about that? You need to answer for what you’ve done to me. I deserve answers.” Ben pounded the table with his fist. 

“You are right, Ben. I owe you an explanation. But that does not,” he stalked closer to Ben and used his fury to compensate for the several inches shorter he stood beneath his nephew, “excuse the way you have hurt that girl. I don’t care what you have been through, she did not deserve that. And what is worse, you have forced me to stay here, with you, instead of attempting to mend what you have done!”

A flash of deep regret and guilt crossed his face before he went stoic. The jagged fury from earlier had dissipated, and had been replaced with a weariness Luke could relate to all too well. Before Rey came into his life, he was nothing but weary. 

Rey. She had only been gone for a few minutes and Luke already was more worried about her than he’d ever been.“I just want to talk about what happened. I just want… I want-”

“I know what you want, Ben.” Luke sighed wearily and rubbed his hand aggressively over his forehead.

“But Rey is fourteen, and I believe the damage that you have just done may be irreparable if I do not go after her now.”

Ben had made it clear that he was unpredictable in the last several minutes, but Luke was not at all expecting him to burst into tears and fold himself down on the floor. He was bent over, hands on his knees and sobbing. “But I was only five when you left, Luke. I was the only one who - who was there when it happened. You were the only person who I could talk to about Jacen, and you left!”

Luke had been hoping for more time. He had hoped that he could prepare himself for this moment, but judging by the acuteness of the situation and the way he can practically hear the air crackling with tension and drama around him and his nephew, Luke didn’t think that he could bypass this pivotal point. 

He leaned down, kneeling by Ben’s shoulders and gingerly patted his hand over his back. “I’m sorry, Ben. I have many regrets about that day, but one of the biggest is leaving the way I did after. I know now that it was a mistake.”

The darker haired man whips his head up and Luke nearly jumped back at the anger etched into the lines of his face. “Now? You only know that it was a mistake now?”

“No, no,” Luke backpedaled and let himself fall to a sitting position on the floor, “I have known. But, not until Rey came into my life. I had been a fool until then. I blamed myself for the situation, Ben, and… There is no excuse.”

Ben looked truly miserable, there on the floor. The tether attaching him to Rey, that pulled at his heart like a threaded needle tugging at his skin, reminding him of her turmoil, eased and grew weak at the site of him. “You have no idea what it's been like,” Ben spoke miserably with his chin to his chest. “I still dream about what I did.”

“What you did? No, no, Ben… What happened to Jacen - what happened to your brother was my fault. Only mine.” 

“I killed him. I remember it like it just happened. And you- you-” Ben broke off, his voice unable to work without breaking. Luke swallowed down the lump in his throat and kneeled over his nephew. “And I left. I never stayed to explain things as you got older, and I know that I made a terrible mistake in leaving, Ben, because I should have been there to explain things as you got older. You were too young…” He trailed off to clear his throat and let Ben’s forehead fall against his shoulder as he rested his hands on his shoulders. “No one is ever old enough to go through something like that, of course.”

Ben sniffled, but seemed to have pulled himself together enough to swipe at his eyes, and Luke felt his nose burn with the effort to hold back his emotions. Looking at him, the boy with the same eyes that gazed up at him swaddled in a blue hospital blanket, Luke could do nothing but try and explain to him everything that happened to cause all of the pain that now filled them 

“I wish I could tell you exactly what you want to hear, Ben. I’m afraid I can’t - I only know of what my pain and regret as felt like through these years. All I can say is that it wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was an accident. It was - it was just an accident, and it could have just as easily been you.”

Ben shook his head vehemently. “Before the accident, we fought. In the backseat of the car. Jacen… He unbuckled his seatbelt, because I dared him to. He was trying to grab that stupid baseball bat…” 

Luke remembered, suddenly, what Ben was referring to - he’d taken his twin nephews to a baseball game, and one of them had been given a small, souvenir baseball bat. The boys had fought nearly the entire way home over who would hold it. He had forgotten that moment - the benign, childish squabble that had become white noise to him since they became old enough to talk. All Luke truly recalled was the accident, the harsh squeal of tires skidding and metal crunching under impact. 

He recalled waking up in the hospital with Han at his side, Ben asleep with an arm in a cast, and asking him, groggily, “Where is Leia?” He remembered the pained look on Han’s face, the way his brow furrowed and he worked his lips over his teeth, thinking of what to say. He did not think the memory would ever fade with time, the one where Han had mumbled, wearily, “She’s, uh… She’s with Jacen.” Jacen had been in surgery, but Leia walked inside the quiet hospital room in tears only fifteen minutes later to tell her husband that their son had died. 

Luke did remember, however, that the reason Jacen had not survived the crash that Luke and Ben so easily had was because he was not buckled into his car seat. The news that Ben very clearly recalled his brother unbuckling was staggering to him - for the past fifteen years, he had been sure that he’d forgotten to fasten Jacen in - he had been positive that his own mistake had killed him, had ripped a son away from his parents, a twin from his brother. “No, no, Ben… I didn’t fasten him in. It had nothing to do with anything you did, it was me-”

“No! Luke, I dared him to do it. I remember it, it’s because of me. It’s my fault he died, it’s my fault my parents were so sad for so long, it’s my fault that you left. And now it’s my fault that Rey is gone.”

Luke, feeling horrible for it, but he felt a profound relief at Ben’s words - of course it wasn’t the boy’s fault but if Jacen had done it himself, that meant that Luke hadn’t made a mistake so horrible that it had ripped apart a family. “Ben, no matter what happened in that car, the real fault - it doesn’t lie with any of us. Not even the other driver, it was just an accident. A stupid accident. I - I know what it feels like, to feel the burden you’re carrying,” he took a shuddering breath in, “but it’s no one’s fault.”

Saying the words out loud was healing in a way he had not anticipated - even though the sharp pain of guilt had dulled over the years he’d spent with Rey, the magnitude of what Luke had thought he’d done still kept him away from his family, from ever truly moving passed it. He felt healed, and the lightness in his chest, over his heart, was so significant he could weep. 

Ben seemed to be coming to that same conclusion. He took a deep breath like it was the first time his lungs had ever been cleansed with fresh air. He looked up at Luke looking so much younger than he did just seconds before. 

“My parents… They’ve said that to me so many times. I don't know why I only believe it now,” his voice was so relieved it was bordering on laughter. Luke patted his back and nodded his agreement. The two shared a look and smiled. 

But Ben’s face turned dark, suddenly, and he shot up, face going ashen where it had just been warm with elation. “Rey! Oh, fuck! I can’t believe all the things I said to her.”

It had nearly slipped his mind, and that alone broke his heart - Luke vaguely mused that it was as if he was destined to never be completely unscathed; he’d only just had a freeing epiphany, but it had been at the expense of Rey. 

“You were in pain. It’s not an excuse, Ben, but perhaps we can explain it to her, together.”

The two scrambled to leave the house, Ben out of the back door Rey had slipped through and Luke right behind him. They went in opposite directions once they reached the beach and found her nowhere in site. Ben went to the right where the beach ended, curved towards the mainland in a series of rocky hills and thick vegetation, and Luke went to the left for several miles, the entire length of the barrier island stretched out with only two large piers standing in the waters. 

Anxiety twisted inside of his stomach and made him break out into a cold sweat on his brow. He had selfishly hoped that Rey would only be just outside, sitting like she did sometimes when they got into silly fights to wait for him to find her curled into a rocking chair with a pout on her face. This was much, much bigger than not letting her go to a party or stay out later than normal. He had hurt her in a way she probably didn’t know was possible, so it made sense that she would not stay in the spot she waited to be comforted. 

Luke didn’t even want to recall the exact words Ben had said to her, all of them being too cringe worthy and cruel to say even to himself, but he felt even worse that he had reacted so poorly. Despite the massive ground he and Ben had just covered, Luke should have listened to his instincts and made Ben wait until Rey was back home. All he could do was hope that they found her soon, and that she wouldn’t be alone for much longer. 

 

Rey wished that she could say she’d gone numb when Ben started saying those things to her, but she didn’t. When she was younger, before Luke had taken her in, she had been a master at forcing herself to feel nothing at all. 

One of the women in charge of the group home she lived in until she was six used to hit her - hit all of the kids - but Rey the most often. When she didn’t finish chores fast enough or eat all of her food, sometimes for no reason at all, the woman would hit her with serving spoons and belts. Worse than that, she’d say terrible things about Rey’s family, where she’d come from and how no one would ever be coming back for her. The only way she was able to hold on to the hope that her parents would return was to go numb, quiet her mind and picture the island in her dreams, where she’d reunite with her parents and play all day. 

After that, in her first foster home that lasted only six months, she’d gone numb when her older foster brother would sit too close to her, whisper things in her ears and stroke down her back, her arms, over her shoulders in a way she knew was not right. And later, when he’d broken her arm the night he woke her up in by trying to sneak into her room, and she screamed loud enough to wake up the whole house, the way the foster parents had taken his side, had only believed that she had a broken arm when she woke up the next morning and it was clearly twisted and swollen in a way it shouldn’t have been, she went numb, then too. There had always been reasons to close her eyes and pretend she was somewhere else, somewhere she was loved and cherished and respected, until she had found that in Luke. 

As she sobbed into her knees outside of Poe’s house, Rey was losing the battle to try and stay reasonable and hopeful. She’d stuttered outside of her house - Luke’s house - for several minutes gasping for air and taking shuddering breaths in before she ran barefoot to Poe’s house; it was closer than Finn’s, and there was a higher chance that his parents weren’t home. 

With her luck that day, however, it had turned out that no one had been home at all, so Rey had miserably tucked herself against the huge flowerpot bordering the front door and given up on reasoning with herself. She and Luke both had been kidding themselves to think that what they had together would last - she was a nobody, and he had a real family. 

She cried until she fell asleep folded against the ceramic. 

 

Ben gave up after only thirty minutes in his search to the left. He knew Rey well enough to know that she wouldn’t go that way - she was barefoot, and it was a drizzly day. That side of the island was risky to be at alone even when dry. 

He turned back and jogged until he caught up with Luke. By then, seeing no sign of her anywhere, Ben was so furious with himself he wished that the earth would swallow him whole. He wished that Luke had left him behind to throw a fit like a pre-teen boy by himself. Poor Rey, he thought to himself. He knew little of her story, but what he did know was painful enough that throwing back in her face like he had would be damaging. 

Luke side-eyed him when he caught up, and the grim line of his face made it clear that he was angry. Ben winced; all the progress they had just made was moot in the face of the situation Ben had created. His uncle had given him the greatest gift; forgiveness from himself, and he had little time to appreciate it. Even if Luke wasn’t so furious, Ben was angry at himself enough for both of them for the things he’d said. He was embarrassed and humbled by the consequences of his cruelty - Ben thought he’d do anything to take back the things he said to her. As he stared at the vast stretch of gloomy beach before him, knowing Rey was somewhere beyond him and In a state that he couldn't imagine, Ben was positive he would even give back the moment he’d just had with Luke if he could tear the memory of that morning like a page in a book. 

 

Another hour went by of silence between the two, with Luke frantically scanning the growing number of tourists on the beach. “Luke, maybe she’s not on the beach? She’s in her pajamas, barefoot, how far could she have gotten?” Ben panted trying to keep up with Luke who had been scouring underneath the pier for her. 

“I wouldn’t underestimate Rey’s recklessness. Especially now.” Ben gulped almost audibly. Though he knew he more than deserved the anger, Luke’s tone was chilling. “Okay. I just… I know her, Luke-”

“Oh, yes, you’ve made it clear that you know Rey, Ben.”

“That’s not what- I just mean that it doesn’t seem like her to go running off aimlessly this far down. I think she’s gone somewhere, I don’t know, the park or-or maybe Finn or Poe’s house.” Ben ran a hand over his thick hair and waited for Luke to finishing chewing over his words. 

“Perhaps. You can’t come with me to get her, Ben. I need to talk to her before you can even try and make right what you did. Keep looking for her here, or go back home, in case she comes back. God forbid I’m not there, too.” He mumbled the last bit and stomped away from Luke back towards the house. 

Ben kicked at a shell and squinted against the salty air hitting his face. 

 

Luke cursed silently that Ben was probably right about Rey’s whereabouts. She wouldn’t gone so far, especially with all the vacationers milling about. He ran to his truck and peeled out of the driveway, engine squealing as he yanked it in drive before the car had fully stopped out of it’s reverse from the driveway. 

He drove down the rows of rental houses slowed whenever he spotted something that looked in remotely like her. Luke didn’t have to wait long, because the phone he’d only just remembered to bring with him chirped in his back pocket. Luke had to thrust his hips up and dig with one hand in the back of his pants to find the phone and he fumbled to slide his thumb across the screen to answer. “Hello? Rey?” He gasped in the phone. 

The voice on the other end was not Rey. “Hi, Luke, this is Anne Dameron, Poe’s mom.”

“Right, right. How are you, Anne?”

“Well, I’m great, Luke, but I’m calling because we found Rey here.” She didn’t sound like someone calling to announce they’d found a friend’s runaway teenager. Luke didn't  
care though, because the relief was like a punch to his solar plexus, sucking the air out of his lungs and bringing tears to his eyes. “Oh, God. Thank God. How is she, is she okay?”

Anne was silent for a few beats, and he heard her take a breath to start speaking before Poe must have yanked the phone out her hand and he greeted him hurriedly. “Luke! I told my parents not to, but we found Rey - she was asleep on our front porch, and I was driving behind them, I didn’t get to the house in time-”

Luke’s nerves lit up again at the franticness of Poe’s tone. “What, Poe? Where is Rey?” Luke practically yelled at him through the phone and clenched the steering wheel so hard his hand hurt. 

Poe breathed out miserably. “My parents called the police, Luke. She’s with Unkar.”


	8. Phone Calls and Admissions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing to say except I'm so sorry this took so long. My job often requires me to travel to Asia and Europe for several days at a time, and usually with little to no warning ahead of time.   
> It's actually been horrible... I've been in and out meetings, forced to sit through conferences and presentations and business dinners. Seriously, I'd rather be playing sims, and reading reylo Fanfiction. 
> 
> Anyway, I wrote and am uploading this chapter on my phone at the airport, and I'm sure there are mistakes. I'll try and go back and polish this later, but I've made you all wait long enough!

Luke was completely speechless, though not entirely surprised. Poe’s parents had made it clear for as long as Rey and Poe had been friends that they didn't like him and they didn't care for Rey’s relationship with him. 

Rey didn't tell people about her past - there was very little that even Luke knew about the short time she'd really spent with Unkar and even less of what her life had been like before that. Poe’s parents only knew that Rey had a foster father, but that Luke was not him. 

It only made sense that the first opportunity Mrs. and Mr Dameron would get to discover more about Rey and her home life while also doing something to deliberately snub Luke they'd make the most of it. 

Poe scrambled to explain more, but Luke was hardly listening as he pressed his foot hard on the accelerator and sped across the small island to get to Unkar. “Luke,” he'd explained frantically, “my dad looked up his address in the school directory - he told the cop that's where Rey lived, that was her foster dad. I couldn't do anything, I tried to get them to call you-”

“No, Poe, it's okay. Thanks for letting me know,” Luke had rushed to end Poe’s panicked explanation and hung up without waiting for a response. His nerves were too high to even try and speak with someone else until Rey was in his site.

As he pulled up to the apartment complex, he was surprised to see that it was nicer looking than he remembered. In Luke’s head, he was the shining protagonist in Rey’s story, and that meant to him that anyone from a distance would be able to tell; he had a nicer, warmer, more loving home filled with things that Rey needed and wanted. He didn't think of Unkar often, but when he did he pictured a decrepit apartment building with broken locks, cracked paint and decaying wood, and entirely not appropriate for anyone decent to live in, much less a teenage girl. 

It bothered him in a way that made Luke feel ashamed of himself - he should be glad that if Rey wasn't with him, she was somewhere that at least looked nice. 

The complex looked nearly brand new, all clean, straight rows of bricks and shiny tile roofs on all three matching buildings. The cement looked newly paved and the parking lot freshly painted, and big decorative pots held tropical plants clearly well taken care of. The front entrance was a double glass door with the name of the complex frosted in cursive in the glass; Oceanside Palms - it wasn't actually ocean side, but Luke was sure that even on the second floor he'd able to see the Atlantic from the large windows. 

The front doorway opened without Luke having to even buzz in, which Luke felt relieved at - anyone could just walk in here, and that was a perfectly good justification for keeping Rey in itself. As he stepped into the lobby, however, he rolled his eyes. It wasn't The Ritz, but it was really nice. There was a front desk, and the woman behind it smiled directly at him in a way that let Luke know everyone who entered had to check in with her. 

He stepped forwards and rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms on his pants. “Hello, what can I do for you?” She chirped at him with her hands poised over her computer keyboard. 

“Uh, yeah, I - I'm looking for Unkar Plutt. He's - I'm a friend of his. Please.” Luke stuttered through his explanation and hopes she wouldn't find him suspicious. 

She nodded in recognition of the name, and held up a finger in a “just one moment” gesture as she pressed a nail into a few numbers on her phone. Her eyes looked up at the ceiling, still with a smile on her face, as she waited for whoever she was calling to answer. 

“Mr. Plutt you have a guest waiting in the lobby,” she greeted even more cheerfully than she had Luke. There was a pause, and then she responded, “who? Oh-” she looked to Luke with an expectant curve of her lips and raise of her eyebrows. He muttered, “Luke Skywalker,” and she repeated it into the phone.

There was another longer pause before she said, “of course, sir,” hung up the phone and looked back at him. “I'll walk you to his room, Mr. Skywalker,” she walked around the front desk and held out an arm for him to follow, “right this way.” 

As he followed her to a bank of elevators where she typed in a code needed to even use them, down a hallway and to the door marked 307, Luke wondered in the world the Unkar he knew could have afforded to live in a place like this. It was clearly a timeshare complex - no one in their right mind would build a residential apartment building in a vacation beach town - but somehow Unkar lived there full time. 

The woman rang a bell surrounded with a chrome frame and waited next to Luke until the door swung open. 

When it did, Luke truly felt like he had stepped into the twilight zone. 

The man behind the door was definitely Unkar, but looked nothing like he did the last time Luke had seen him - nearly twelve months had gone by since then. 

Unkar was still a large man, but he looked less like a glutton and more jolly. His face didn't seem so much like a block of stone permanently etched to be angry; it was kinder and gentler, and the smile didn't look anything like the sneer Luke had seen on him many times. He was bald, but it seemed to suit him, and his wardrobe has obviously been updated. The old stained and threadbare rags he usually wore were replaced with slacks and a tropically printed unbuttoned shirt with a t-shirt underneath emblazoned with a surfboard logo. 

“Good morning, Mr. Plutt,” the woman greeted him when it was clear Luke would do nothing but stare with an open mouth. 

Unkar bid her a goodbye with a polite “have a great day, Maggie,” and opened the door wider to slow Luke inside. 

The apartment was nice on the inside, though Luke felt very little could surprise him after the last several minutes. He stepped into the joined kitchen and living area, separated only by a breakfast bar, and spun to face Unkar. 

“Where is she?” Without waiting for a response, he called out, “Rey!”

Unkar crossed his arms over his wide chest, and narrowed his eyes but said nothing, because the waifish sound of Rey’s voice from just behind Luke spoke for him. “Luke.”

He turned slowly to find that he'd missed her in his first scan of the room. She was still in her pajamas, her hair damp and her cheeks and nose red with cold. She had a throw blanket over her shoulders and a towel wrapped around her legs, and she looked miserably upset. The sight of her was like a punch to the chest and he sucked in a watery breath, his eyes burning with unshed tears. The relief of seeing her was palpable, and all the adrenaline that had pumped through his veins over the last few hours ran dry, leaving in its wake an exhaustion that was bone deep. 

Luke took long strides across the room to kneel before her and clasped his hands over where her's were folded together in her lap. “Rey, thank God,” he breathed out. His palms shook as he ran them up her arms, only semi consciously checking for injuries, and then to cup her face in both of his hands. “I've been so worried about you, sweetheart.”

She sniffed in response and her head tipped into the pressure of his hand. “Let's go home, and we can talk about everything, okay? I'm so sorry, Rey.”

Rey parted her lips and Luke nearly stood to tug her up as well but Unkar’s voice from just behind him stopped him. 

“She's not going. Rey wants to stay here.”

He shook his head and stroked his thumb over her cheek. Luke spoke only to her. “I know you're upset. You have every right to be upset, Rey. What Ben said - they were awful things, but we both know that they aren't true,” Luke shifted on his knees and dropped one hand to hold her hands again. “I think… I believe that even Ben knows they aren't true. He's just-” Luke shook his head even thinking about the foolishness of his nephew. “He's troubled. It's not an excuse, but-”

Rey spoke softly, and just the way her breath hitched in preparation to speak stopped his words in their tracks. “I don't want to talk about Ben.”

“Of course, of course, Rey. I'm sorry. Let's just go home, sweetie.” Luke could tell even as the words left his mouth that Rey had no intention of leaving.

She barely knew Unkar - he was her foster father but the time she spent in his home he was rarely there to spend with her. He was almost constantly working in his salvage yard, and pawned her off to Luke as often as he could - which, without any hesitation from Luke, was all the time.

Unkar stepped closer and Luke feared that the larger man would pull him away from Rey. Luke wasn't positive he wouldn't strike the man for touching him if he did. “You should leave, Luke. You've seen that she's fine,”

The fact that this historically poor caretaker was trying to reason with Luke was infuriating. “No, I haven't,” he spat out at Unkar with his head turned to see him. 

Rey tucked herself into the blanket more closely, “I am fine. I want to stay here. You should go back to- you should just go back.”

Luke could feel his heart fracturing in his chest at the way she was practically pleading with him. “Rey, I… I can't leave you here. I won't.”

“Why? This is where I'm supposed to be! I shouldn't have even been staying with you at all!” Her voice wavered but Rey tried to make it as strong as she could despite her emotions. 

He almost gasped at her words, but Luke couldn't bring himself to blame her. He'd known as soon as Ben began his tirade that Rey might not ever be able to heal from his words. It made him feel an even bigger fool; Luke should have taken Rey and gone somewhere else until Ben cooled down, he should have swept her from the room before he was allowed to say more than a few of those ugly things to her. His failure in that moment resonated throughout the room.

“You know that's not true. Your home is with me, Rey,” he whispered to her, but Luke felt that his best option now would be to leave her. What was he supposed to do with Ben, if he brought Rey back home?

She shook her head and Luke could see that she was the most miserable he'd seen her in a long time, maybe ever. It killed him to think that she felt forced to turn to her useless foster dad at what must have been the most lost she'd ever felt, when he had up until then been her sole confidant. “Please just go. I can't be there right now.”

“Will you call me? I'll- maybe tonight? Maybe once you.. Once you've had some time to yourself, relaxed, you'll want to come home, okay?” He leaned forwards and brushed her hair out of her face. “Please call me. I want to make sure you're okay.”

She nodded, and Luke shared a heated look with Unkar before slipping out of the apartment and standing in the hallway for several minutes, completely baffled. 

 

Luke went home to find Ben anxiously sitting at the kitchen table. He walked by him, ignoring his nephew’s questions of “did you find her? Is she okay? Luke! Where is Rey?” 

He was thankful that his room was at the front of the hallway and that he wouldn't have to walk by Rey’s open doorway to lay on his bed. Luke shut the door to his room with what he thought would be a satisfying click. Instead, all he felt was the echo of the moment that he should have realized hours ago would cause everything that happened. As soon as Ben closed his door, something that never happened in their house, Luke should have known to intervene, or get Rey away from Ben before. 

Luke tried to close his eyes and breathe deeply to try and ease some of the nauseating anxiety rolling his stomach. While that usually worked in his younger years, raising a teenager even as perfect as Rey had aged faster than then he would have before he met her. That, plus the grueling last few hours lulled him into a sleep. 

He woke to his phone ringing hours later, and nearly threw the cellphone across the room as he fumbled to answer. “Rey!” He greeted, blinking harshly to alleviate his foggy vision and hoping his voice didn't make it clear that he had been dreaming only a few seconds ago. 

“Hi, Luke,” Rey answered back. She was quiet, and sounded as tired as him. Luke knew the tones and pitches of voice very well, and imagined her curled onto her side in a dark room, covers tucked around her shoulders and happy exhaustion weighing her eyelids. Shortly after they began growing close, Rey would call him at night just like she was at the moment, wanting to speak with him before she slept and talking about any number of things; chores that Unkar had made her do, how nervous she was for a presentation the next day at school, how she heard it was going to storm the next day and she hopes they could still go outside for gym anyway. Luke had been so happy to be the last, calming voice she heard before she went to sleep. When she was younger he would read books to her over the phone, and as she got older the phone calls lessened only because she stayed at his house, in her own room just across the hall. 

“Are you okay, sunshine?” He rarely used that name for her, but he couldn't help but let it slip. His ray of sunshine. 

“I guess so,” her gravelly voice answered back. “Unkar has a really nice guest room, here. The bed has a heated mattress pad.”

Luke tried to picture Unkar shopping for his new apartment and buying a mattress pad so luxurious - the Unkar he thought he knew would never even think to buy a regular one. “He’s - uh - he’s a lot different than the last time I saw him.”

Rey laughed lightly into the phone, but it seemed humorless to him, more like she was acknowledging how insane he found Unkar’s change in appearance. “His salvage yard has been doing well. And I think he’s started towing and impounding cars.”

“He looks different. Good… He looks good.” It pained him to admit it, and he wondered if Rey was happy for Unkar, or if she even cared. 

“Yeah, I guess.”

They lapsed into silence, and Luke suspected she may have fallen asleep until she spoke again. She was crying again. “What am I to you, Luke?”

“Rey, oh, Rey. You - you’re my whole world. You must know how much I care about you. I love you like a daughter, Rey.” Her breaths wavered through the phone and she made a whining sound. 

“I’m not just… I haven’t been a distraction?” 

“A distraction? What do you mean?” Luke rubbed at his eyes and thought he vaguely heard Ben moving around in his room. 

“From your problems. I know you’re still sad, about whatever happened with Ben a long time ago. Before we met, you were sad about it. And… After today I wondered if i’ve just been a way to distract yourself from it.”

Luke could hardly blame her for thinking it, but it hurt nonetheless; because it wasn't true, she was more than that to him, but at the same time her presence in his life had been a wonderful, blessed distraction from the pain in his past. His silence seemed to fill in gaps for her, and Rey hiccuped into the phone. “I have to go-”

“No, no, Rey… Don’t hang up. I’m sorry,” he breathed out but it did nothing to relieve the tension in his body, “You have been - I don’t think that’s the right word for it, but, yes, you’ve been a good distraction from my past. But I haven’t… All of this time, it hasn’t just been to keep my mind of it. That’s only been a symptom, a side effect of having you in my life. Does that make sense?”

She sniffled. “Yeah, I guess so.”

He hesitated to bring up his nephew, but it was killing him to not try and ease some of the hurts his words had caused her. “You know, Rey, Ben did not mean any of those things he said. Sometimes, when people are hurting, they need to hurt others. To make themselves better, or to get attention, to push people away. He’s… A troubled young man, Ben. And there were a lot of things between us that were unresolved, and he foolishly tried to force me into talking about it by hurting you. And, by extension, hurting me.”

“I know. I know he didn’t mean it. It just… How could he think all of those things up, just like that? He must have thought them, at least once. Other people must think that.” The fact that she was admitting that Rey felt self conscious about what other people thought of their relationship shocked him - he cursed Ben for casting the self-doubt in her that she’d been above for so many years. Luke himself knew that some people had expressed curiously and intrigue over the two of them, some nicer than others, but Rey had never been tainted or made to feel lesser by them until Ben threw all of it at her at once. 

“They don't. No one that matters, anyway.”

She hummed in response and Luke knew she was fading fast, the events of the day catching up to her. “Go to sleep, Rey. I'll come get you tomorrow, and we can all talk. Okay?”

“Okay,” she murmured, and Luke felt a weight lift off of his chest. He closed his eyes again imagining that tomorrow they'd all be able to push what happened that day behind them, move on from it and go back to being the strange but functional family they'd been before.


	9. Beaches and Roommates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh I suck I'm sorry! Being an adult is hard :(

The next morning, Rey texted Luke and he warned Ben gruffly that she would be back home soon. To his credit, his nephew didn't seem to be anything but pensive, humble, and a complete nervous wreck. Luke had woken up before the sun rose to Ben lingering by the now-open door of his room, and had immediately been bombarded with questions. 

“Where did she go? Was she okay when you saw her? Did you tell her- tell her I didn’t mean it?” The dark-haired, wide-eyed teenager sat down on Luke’s bed and stared at him in anticipation. 

As angry as Luke was at his nephew, the genuine remorse he could see etched on his pale face eased his disappointment. A lot had happened in the past 24 hours, and he was eager for all three of them to move on. If that meant letting go of how upset he was with Ben, then he would. 

He sighed and pushed himself up out of his bed. “She’s alright, Ben. Rey’s resilient, and wiser than her years.”

 

Ben saw that for himself thirty minutes later when Luke walked back inside the house and Rey gingerly following close behind him. He approached them both, and Luke knew better than to interfere with the look that was on both of their faces. 

Rey stood still in the middle of the front room, arms at her sides and eyes fixed on Ben’s in apprehension. Ben looked at her in a kind of wonderment, as if he was only just realizing who she was. Ben took the full picture of her in - much shorter than him, but because of how much younger she was. Her face was soft and round in a way Ben knew it would not be even the next summer, and he cringed to think at other changes her body would make. Rey was rail-thin, with legs and arms like bent wire where they stuck out of her torso, and no curves to speak of. Ben had watched her when he thought she wasn’t looking eying the girls Poe brought around, assessing how she looked compared to them, glancing at them with curious, half-closed eyes and then looking down at herself and finding her own body coming up short. It had always, and still did, seemed inappropriate to ever speak to Rey about how she felt in regards to her body but he couldn’t believe that he’d never even jokingly told her how pretty she was. Every time she eyed some teenager on the beach in a bikini and turned away, crossing her arms over her stomach, Ben wondered why he had never playfully elbowed her. He cursed himself for not saying, “Rey, don’t compare yourself to other girls. You’re perfect, just the way you are.”

He’d always looked at Rey from ten feet below, the light emanating from her blinding him from the pedestal he’d placed her on. She always seemed stronger than him, braver and smarter and kinder than he could ever be. The Rey standing across from him was a more raw and bared version of the girl he’d come to know. “Rey…” He started and was ashamed at how gruff his voice sounded. “I didn’t mean anything that I said.”

He stepped closed to her and it seemed a miracle that she didn’t step away. “I know saying I’m sorry won’t fix it, but I am sorry. I am so sorry for saying those things to you… I was being immature and stupid. I do that a lot,” he rubbed at the back of his neck and looked back up at her, hoping to at least see a raise of her eyebrow. Her face was impassive. “I took advantage of how close we’ve been become, and everything that we’ve talked about this summer as friends to hurt you, so I could - so I could-”

“I know, Ben. Thank you for… Thanks for the apology.” He walked closer and dared to place his palms on her thin shoulders. “I owe you more than an apology, Rey. But… It’s a start.”

Rey smiled with a closed mouth and closed the distance between them, pressing her face into his chest and wrapped her arms around his torso. They were silent for several long moments, Rey breathing in the boy she was sure she’d always have a huge crush on and Ben eternally grateful that the girl in his arms had ever come into his life in the first place. 

He pressed an awkward kiss into the crown of her head and vowed that the last two weeks he would be spending with her and his uncle would be a non stop showing of how much she meant to him. 

 

And it was. The last two weeks Ben stayed at the beach that summer, Rey spent every moment she wasn’t in the bathroom or asleep with Ben. When she woke up, Ben was already waiting for her in the kitchen and when she went to bed, Ben came into her room shortly after she had crawled beneath her covers to lull her to sleep with some story of New York and his misadventures. He’d been ashamed of them before the mistake he’d made, but as he spoke of sneaking out of school to go concerts or stealing his dads car and driving it back to the city from the Hamptons in the middle of the night, Rey would laugh and punch him playfully in the shoulder. He loved to make her laugh, even if it was at his own expense, so he told her as many stories of his foolishness as he could think of - those that didn’t involve drugs, alcohol and sex, of course. 

In many ways, their last two weeks were similar to the first three months of his stay. Ben and Rey visited the pier and ate cheeseburgers and ice cream, they half-heartedly fished off of the end of the pier, spending most of their time laughing at tourists and joking around. Ben visited her friends’ houses with her and allowed himself to be embarrassed by her lessons in skimboarding and standup paddleboarding. Mostly, though, it was different in ways that Ben couldn't describe. Realizing the depth of their connection, how much his opinion of Rey meant to her and vice versa had matured and humbled him in a way he didn't think possible. 

At the end of his visit, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic of a goodbye as Ben had been expecting, but it still left an ache in his chest. Rey and Luke drove him to the airport at five in the morning, stopping at a Chick-Fil-A on the way there, and upon Luke’s instance, had not dropped him off but parked the car and went inside, instead. 

Rey had pressed kisses on his cheeks, dug her little hands into his back in a fierce hug and tearily made him swear on his life that he’d come back. They hadn’t discussed his college plans much, as Ben had gotten uncomfortable whenever it was brought up because he didn’t know himself, so he didn’t know if he’d ever really have a summer vacation again. He promised anyway, hugging Rey back so tightly that she wheezed out her laughter. 

Luke’s goodbye had been much more emotional, with the older man cupping the back of his head and hugging him with an awkwardly hard pat on his back. Ben was expecting it to be that way - they’d healed wounds together that neither man thought would ever be healed, and Ben would be returning changed in a way he’d not expected. 

He finally had to go through the security line, and Rey hugged him one last time before stepping to be beside Luke and clasp her hands together, licking her lips in nervous anticipation. There were tears in both of their eyes, and Ben had to look away from them before he embarrassed himself by crying, too. 

They waited until he had passed the metal detector and picked up his bags again, and Ben gave one last wave over the heads of the growing crowd behind him before walking to his terminal. 

It would be three years until he saw Rey again. 

 

The three year gap was filled with a lot of late night facebook messaging, short phone calls and occasional texting. As it had turned out, Ben had come home to parents maybe as changed as he had been that summer. His dad was present more - probably because he was mostly retired, but Ben took what he could get happily - and his mom, Ben had finally realized, had ever only been doing what she thought was best. 

He’d stopped hanging out with his old friends, for the most part, anyway, and went to a community college for a semester since he had failed to apply to a single university his senior year. After that, to every member of his family and Rey’s delight, he’d transferred to the University of California at Berkeley and majored in Chemistry, and found himself calling Rey for help on his assignments more than once. He was four years older, but Rey was only two grades behind him and would be applying for colleges in only a year. She was in advanced classes already, but she was so humble and sweet that he never once felt like she was bragging or talking down to him when she helped with him his studies. 

When she eventually did start applying, it was his parents that updated him on Rey’s acceptances - apparently Luke and Rey had been visited by his parents more than once, and they had gone to New York on several occasions to stay with them. His mother called him, nearly in tears with how proud and excited she was on her brother’s pseudo-daughter’s accomplishments. “Ben, you won’t believe it,” she’s gushed into the phone. 

“I doubt that, mom. Rey’s practically a certified genius.”

“Oh, I know, I know but still! At sixteen… just, wow, thinking about where I was at sixteen - where you were at sixteen! And Rey! I mean, she’s been accepted everywhere she applied, Ben! I just can’t-”

“Mom! I get it, please just tell me!” He’d laughed and interrupted her. 

“Alright, alright. Get this, Ben. Rey’s gotten into Harvard, MIT, Northwestern and Penn State! And, sorry, I’m still reading this e-mail from Luke, but I think she made it into Berkely and Vassar, Ben! And, she’s gotten full-rides from a few, half from the rest!”

Ben had let his mom blab on about how if she went to Vassar, she’d kidnap the kid if she didn’t come stay with them every weekend, but would of course prefer it if she lived with them, and if she chose to go to Harvard Leia herself would move to Cambridge and buy a townhouse and even if Rey only stayed there one time it would be worth it. He was so proud of her, and ached to hug her close in congratulations. 

Instead, he'd texted her a a confetti emoji and “proud of you, kid,” which she’d used as a segway to ask about a party she'd seen him at because of snapchat. 

Ben hadn’t come home once since going to college, but freshmen year had been a huge adjustment, and he’d been too embarrassed to admit that he needed to retake a class over the summer to speak much to Luke or Rey about why he wouldn’t be visiting. Sophomore year, he’d gotten a job as a lab assistant in the chemistry department so the only time he went home was three days over winter break, and his parents, uncle and Rey had been too thrilled with him to be truly upset. Junior year was so busy that he’d hardly had time to sleep and eat, with the same job, an internship and an overloaded course schedule to even think about leaving his apartment for the weekend. 

When he thought of Rey, though, who was two years ahead of other kids her age, had gotten scholarships to every school she had applied to, had a GPA so good it was above a 4.0 (Ben wasn’t quite sure what the number was, but he knew his parents had it ingrained in their brains), was on her school’s track team, swim team, and had a job at her foster dad’s salvage yard the last two years, Ben was embarrassed for his excuses of never visiting. Rey and Luke made time for his parents, and he was sure Rey’s schedule was just as if not more busy than his own. 

Her first year of college, from what he heard of it from Rey herself and from Luke and his mom, was a major success. So many of her high school courses had been advanced, and she was already a semester ahead by the time she walked onto the MIT campus that fall. Luke had been nervous about Rey going so far, and so had the rest of the Solo family, but of course she had exhibited only the most responsible of behaviors. 

During his conversation with Luke, Ben had expressed a great deal of worry that Luke had hardly made him feel better about. 

“She’s just sixteen, Luke. Don’t you think, at least until she’s older, she should stay in North Carolina?”

Luke had grumbled into the phone. “Of course I do, but she’s gotten Unkar’s permission, and how can I disapprove when she’s going to MIT?”

“I’m worried, Luke. I don’t think it’s a good idea. She’s been too sheltered with you. Has she ever even kissed a boy? Drank any alcohol?”

His uncle hissed into the phone in disapproval of the conversation. “Of course not! And she’ll stay that way.”

The two laughed about Rey and her innocence, at how she was so wise beyond her years and smarter than anyone either of them had ever met, but just the other day had pronounced “tequila” wrong because she had no idea what it was, and still blushed when there was kissing on tv. 

They had little to worry about - Rey took on college like a pro, like she’d been preparing for it her entire life, and never missed a check-in call with Luke. As far as any of them knew, she was in bed by ten every night, and if she wasn’t it was because she was with one of her study-groups at the library. Rey had made friends and went to parties, but the kind of party Ben wouldn’t be caught dead at, where the people played card games and didn’t play the music too loud. 

 

The Rey that was texting him and the Rey he heard about from family members was far different from the Rey he saw three years later, at a party in Panama City, Florida. He had no idea she’d been going there for Spring Break, and as he learned later, neither did any member of his family. 

Ben had been a senior, and gone to Florida for his one and only stereotypical college spring break trip, and Rey had been with her internship director and other members of some nerdy science club at a conference the same week and same city. The night he’d seen her, he’d found Rey half-naked in the middle spot on a shot ski, sandwiched by two shirtless frat guys and shooting back a lemon drop. She was flushed, hair pulled back with soft fly-aways around her face and freckles on full display from the sun. 

He wasn’t sure, at first, if the hot young girl shaking her hips and laughing with a group of guys wearing greek lettered tanks was his Rey, but as he shook off his friends and walked towards her, Ben had been positive. There was no way that the pretty face, charming laughter, and graceful mannerisms belonged to anyone but her. 

Ben approached her in a hurry, knowing without a doubt that not a single adult in her life knew where she was, and practically roared when he saw her duck away from a kiss one of the frat guys leaned his head in for, one big hand pulling her in on her waist and the other dipping down to grab her bottom. Ben stood before the table she was at, still unaware of his presence, and grabbed her roughly by the hips with both hands to lift and pull her off the surface and back on the sandy beach. Rey shrieked in shock, but as she recognized him, her cry turned into delight as she wrapped her arms and legs around him and gasped. “Ben! I can’t believe you’re here! I haven’t see you in forever!”

Her slurred words and overenthusiasm spoke volumes of her lack of sobriety, and Ben pulled her off of him by her armpits. “What the hell, Rey! You’re drunk?”

She grinned back up at him and reached for his face happily. “Duh! This is PCB!” Her shout, though not directed at anyone but him, garnered whoops and hollers and even briefly started a chant of “PCB! PCB!” 

He swung her around and walked towards the opening of the crowd towards the entrance of one of many hotels lining the beach. Rey was pliant and obedient in his arms, and he prayed that she was only so easy with her body because she knew him, and not because she was drunk. 

“Rey, why are you here? How’d you get here?” He urged her to look at him by shaking her shoulders, and her eyes snapped back to his easily. 

“I had a… a conf- conferenance’ or whatever - stupid engineerin’ student thingy. Me and my,” she hiccuped and her body swung forwards, chest colliding with his, “my friends snuck out and came here.” Her chin poked him in the pec muscle and she giggled into the damp material of his shirt. Ben would have laughed at her if he weren’t so furious. Rey knew better than to put herself in a situation like she was in now. 

“Where are your friends, Rey?” Her shoulders shrugged beneath his hands. He dipped one down to rub between her shoulder blades and lifted his eyes to the sky in relief and exacerbation. His vision practically turned red to imagine what might have happened to her if Ben hadn't happened upon her. 

He pushed her away from him slightly and scanned his eyes up and down her body. She seemed to be intact and unharmed. Ben had never known Rey to wear a bikini like she was, only ever remembering her with one-pieces and tankinis that barely showed off the skin above her bottoms. He'd seen pictures of her in the three years between then and now, but seventeen-year old in the flesh Rey was completely different. 

Where she'd been all gangly and knobby limbs, Rey had grown into her body. She was still rail-thin, but had filled out in places he deliberately looked away from, and her face was no longer that of a little girl. She was fresh-faced and had an easy smile, but if he didn't know her he'd have thought she belonged where she was - with a bunch of other of-age teens and twenty-year olds. 

“I'm taking you back to- of fuck,” Ben was going to say his hotel, but he was sharing it with four other twenty-one and twenty-two year old boys, “where are you staying? Who are you staying with?” 

Rey raises herself clumsily onto her toes and looked over his shoulder. She braced herself with two hands on his shoulders and comically swayed from side to side to look for her companions, her eyes squinting in the sun. He rolled his eyes to see a pair of sunglasses hooked into the middle string of her tiny bikini. “I don't see em’ Ben,” she lowered herself and smiled up at him. “They're kinda lame. They prolly’ went back.”

“Back where? Where did they go?” 

She threw her hand out to the side and pointed in the general direction of where her hotel was. “Over there somewhere, I dunno,” she followed her hand with her eyes and shrugged before something dawned on her and she whipped her head up, “oh! It's on my key card. Hold on,” she turned away from him and brought her hands to her bikini top and side-eyed him, “don't look!” 

He did look, but Rey didn't check as she pressed the material of her bathing suit down over her breast to keep it in place and reached the fingers of her other hand inside of the cup and wiggled them around. Ben swallowed uncomfortably at the site and was about to vocalize his complete bewilderment when she brought her fingers out and with them, a keycard for a hotel room. 

“This is where I'm staying,” she offered him the card and put her hands on both of her hips. 

He looked at the card and recognized the hotel as a fancy one only about a mile down the beach. It was exclusive, and he doubted any of the young people around them were staying there, probably why Rey had ventured out so far. Ben pocketed the key and tugged Rey back towards him with a wrist - she had strayed several inches back, staring longingly with a grin at a group of people shot gunning beers in a straight line. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he muttered to himself as Rey bumped against his chest, her pliancy unnerving, tempting and terrifying all at the same time. “How long have you been here?”

She appeared to be content in her place against him, resting nearly all of her weight on his chest and nuzzling his shoulder as she answered, “Three days,” her murmur vibrated against his skin. 

“I mean here, Rey, on the beach,” Ben let her loll as his blood cooled. “Since, like, nine or something.”

He checked the time on his phone and gritted his teeth to find it several hours past nine already. “Have you eaten?”

She laughed and shook her head “no” as she looked up at him through squinted eyes. As her head turned from side to side, her nose brushed along his law and Ben shivered, cupped her elbows and pushed her away from him. The proximity was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. “Then let’s go. I’ll take you to your hotel, first. You need to shower, Rey, you real of beer and sweat.”

Rey was more than agreeable, and after Ben texted his friends to say he’d run into an old friend and would be with her for a while, he marched her down the beach towards her hotel. Rey had apparently made a lot of friends on her own during her spring break adventure, because every few yards, some group of loud and intoxicated people would shout her name and some form of inside joke she’d shared with them only before. Ben was sure he was coming off as a controlling asshole, but it took everything in him to not haul off and punch someone and throw Rey over his shoulder, so in his opinion he was being gracious by just pulling her along and ignoring the cries for attention. 

She pouted, tugging on the material of his shirt and looking up at him in mock despair. “Ben,” she whined, “can’t we stay for just a little bit? I’m having fun!” He barked out a laugh and shook his head in astonishment. “When you’re sober I’m going to lecture the hell out of you, do you know that? What you’re doing is dangerous and stupid, Rey. YOu know better than this,” his last comment was said making direction eye contact and she rolled her eyes, but a flash of hurt crossed her face before looking away. “I never have any fun,” she murmured. 

Eventually, he’d pulled her through the crowd of people and flashed her keycard at the security guard standing at the gate to the private beach of her hotel. They were getting looks - most of if not all of the people at the hotel were businessmen and women, families and elderly people, and Ben and Rey looked a picture of the stereotypical drunk spring breakers. He hurried her through the lobby and to the elevators, and prayed no one stopped them. He doubted Rey had any i.d. On her, and Ben’s would only prove that he didn’t belong there. 

They made it through the long row of hotel rooms with little fanfare. Ben had to keep tugging Rey along while keeping her at a distance he was comfortable with - the alcohol was making her very affectionate, and Ben was feeling flushed. 

He swiped her card, and as soon as Rey walked through the door she was pounced on by her roommates. “Rey! Thank god, we’ve been worried about you! We were just about to call Dr. Kanata-” exclaimed one girl, while the other chirped “we thought you were going to be right behind us, where did you go?”

Both girls were clearly older than Rey, though probably not older than him, and we're not the type of people to spring break in Florida. One of them was about as gangly as Rey had been in her early teenage years, but it was not becoming of a girl in her twenties - Ben felt guilty for thinking it. She was pale with pointy facial features and short, only reaching Rey’s shoulders. The other girl looked like a teacher’s pet personified, and Ben guessed that she was the reason Rey had been left on the beach by herself. 

“Who is this guy, Rey?” The annoying-looking girl eyed him and Rey accusingly and folded her arms across her chest. “You brought a guy back, really?”

Rey rolled her eyes and turned to face him. “No! This is Ben! He’s Luke’s nephew, I ran into him.”

He stepped farther into the room and nudged Rey further in as well. “We’re getting her dressed and I’m taking her to lunch. She needs to eat.”

The girls looked at him warily, but their obvious lack of caring of Rey and what she did kept them from asking questions. There was a scattering of open textbooks and two opened laptops on both queen-sized beds that eventually dragged their attention away, leaving Ben to gathering Rey’s clothes and pushing her inside the bathroom with them. 

It took a lot of effort on Ben’s part not to start screaming at the top of his lungs throughout the process. Rey kept insisting that he join her in the bathroom, but he stayed firmly by the door, at one point holding the knob shut to keep her from poking her head out - the last time she’d done it she’d been completely topless, and Ben feared what he might do with the memory of her bare breasts seared into his brain. “Please, Rey,” he’d moaned with an arm thrown over his eyes, “just put your clothes on and let’s go.”

Rey stepped out of the bathroom looking slightly disheveled but much more presentable than she had been - she was wearing jean shorts and white shirt that emblazoned with “MIT Engineering Department”, and on the back was a big picture of the school logo. Ben grinned as she stood in front of him and asked if she looked alright. “Your hair needs some work, kiddo,” he’d admitted, and Rey turned around to present her head to him. 

Ben rolled his eyes and but tugged her hair out of the messy and tangled bun it had been in to part it in three chunks and braid it down her back. “You know how to braid, Ben?” She was laughing at him, but he tugged playfully at the end of her hair in response and ushered her back into the hotel room. “Grab your phone,” he ordered, and Rey stumbled across the room to the neat pile of things on the small table in the corner that belonged to her to grab her phone and waved goodbye to her roommates as she left. 

As Ben walked back down the hallway with her, he wondered if it would be better to eat first and then call Luke to tell him what Rey had been up to, or if he’d deny her the chance to sober up before getting her in the most trouble she’d ever been in her life.


End file.
